Case frames as contextual mappings to case law in BestPortal

Abstract

This paper introduces case frames as a way to provide a more meaningful structure to vocabulary mappings used to bridge the gap between laymen and legal descriptions of court proceedings. Case frames both reduce the ambiguity of queries, and improve the ability of users to formulate good quality queries. We extend the BestMap ontology with a formalisation of case frame based mappings in OWL 2, present a new version of BestPortal, and show how case frames impact retrieval results compared to simple contextual mappings and a direct fulltext search. © 2010 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.