The MetaLex Document Server - Legal Documents as Versioned Linked Data
Abstract
This paper introduces the MetaLex Document Server (MDS), an ongoing project to improve access to legal sources (regulations, court rulings) by means of a generic legal XML syntax (CEN MetaLex) and Linked Data. The MDS defines a generic conversion mechanism from legacy legal XML syntaxes to CEN MetaLex, RDF and Pajek network files, and discloses content by means of HTTP-based content negotiation, a SPARQL endpoint and a basic search interface. MDS combines a trans- parent (versioned) and opaque (content-based) naming scheme for URIs of parts of legal texts, allowing for tracking of version information at the URI-level, as well as reverse engineering of versioned metadata from sources that provide only partial information, such as many web-based legal content services. The MDS hosts all current 27 thousand national regulations of the Netherlands, comprising some 87.9M an ongoing project to improve access to legal sources (regulations, court rulings) by means of a generic legal XML syntax (CEN MetaLex) and Linked Data. The MDS defines a generic conversion mechanism from legacy legal XML syntaxes to CEN MetaLex, RDF and Pajek network files, and discloses content by means of HTTP-based content negotiation, a SPARQL endpoint and a basic search interface. MDS combines a trans- parent (versioned) and opaque (content-based) naming scheme for URIs of parts of legal texts, allowing for tracking of version information at the URI-level, as well as reverse engineering of versioned metadata from sources that provide only partial information, such as many web-based legal content services. The MDS hosts all current 27 thousand national regulations of the Netherlands, comprising some 87.9M triples.
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