Not that things have to or even ought to be done this way, but I wanted to just post some thoughts I have been having about markup and get them out there.
Jurisdiction: Should be presented like this in this order: 1.Country, 2.Jurisdictional Subdivision, 3.Court name, 4.Location.
Presented in this order, with just this order of priority, item 4 to be optional.
If it is done this way, everything will sort out.
Example 1:
<sjm:court>
<sjm:country>
<rdf:value>United States</rdf:value>
</sjm:country>
<sjm:juris_sub>
<rdf:value>Federal</rdf:value>
</sjm:juris_sub>
<sjm:court_name>
<rdf:value>Court of Appeals</rdf:value>
</sjm:court_name>
<sjm:location>
<rdf:value>Third Circuit</rdf:value>
</sjm:location>
</sjm:court>
Example 2:
<sjm:court>
<sjm:country>
<rdf:value>United States</rdf:value>
</sjm:country>
<sjm:juris_sub>
<rdf:value>PA</rdf:value> # standardize on postal abbreviations!!
</sjm:juris_sub>
<sjm:court_name>
<rdf:value>Court of Common Pleas</rdf:value>
</sjm:court_name>
<sjm:location>
<rdf:value>Dauphin County</rdf:value>
</sjm:location>
</sjm:court>
The 'sjm', of course, stands for "Standardized Judicial Markup".
Citations: I am on record as favoring a media neutral citation style as the base of a URI/primary key scheme. Having said that, many documents have multiple citations, and there should be a way to represent everything. This is very similar to how Qualified Dublin Core handles citations, but modified to our purposes:
<sjm:citation>
<sjm:official_reporter>
<rdf:value>125 NY Misc. 425</rdf:value>
</sjm:official_reporter>
</sjm:citation>
<sjm:citation>
<sjm:AALL>
<rdf:value>2004 NY Orange Co. 55</rdf:value>
</sjm:AALL>
</sjm:citation>
Repeat as necessary. Of course, we could also break this down into optional 'volume', 'page' and 'reporter' elements, but I don't think we really need or want to.
Another option would be to go with the D.C. "identifier" tag. In Qualified D.C., it would be of this form:
<dc:identifier>
<dcq:bibliographicCitation>
<rdf:value>BLUEBOOK_CITATION</rdf:value>
</dcq:bibliographicCitation>
</dc:identifier>
<dc:identifier>
<dcq:bibliographicCitation>
<rdf:value>AALL_CITATION</rdf:value>
</dcq:bibliographicCitation>
</dc:identifier>
<dc:identifier>
<sjm:docket>
<rdf:value>DOCKET NUMBER</rdf:value>
</sjm:docket>
</dc:identifier>
This has the advantage of being in Dublin Core (for whatever that's worth), and there is some appeal to grouping such identifiers. However, I think the range of identifiers for judicial decisions is sufficiently limited to make the greater universality of the D.C. scheme unnecessary.
- LexCraft articleType
- LexCraft corpusType
- LexCraft jurisdictionScope
- LexCraft section
- LexCraft tags