English Private Law is presented in two volumes which break on the line between property and obligations. Beyond obligations lies the law of actions, and before property comes the law of persons. Before persons comes Part I, whose single chapter deals with the sources of law. Hence there are five Parts in ail. They are not randomly selected, and they are not ordered by the alphabet. The principal task of this introduction is ta explain the structural scheme which relates these five Parts one...

L'alliance du droit et de la science informatique n'est pas récente. Préfigurée dans les recherches logiques sur le droit, elle s'est développée avec la naissance de la cybernétique. Puis l'informatique s'est intéressée aux opérations de mémorisation de l'information juridique: les grandes banques de données sont devenues les bibliothèques quotidiennes du juriste. La dernière étape, la nôtre, est celle de l'intelligence artificielle c'est-à-dire d'une informatique qui formalise des...

The paper looks at ways in which traditional classification and indexing tools have dealt with the relationship between constituent terms ; variations in these are examined and compared with the methods used in machine searching, particularly of the Internet and World Wide Web. Apparent correspondences with features of index languages are identified, and further methods of applying classification and indexing theory to machine retrieval are proposed.

Basic skills of classification and subject indexing lhavc been little taught in British library schools since automation was introduced into libraries. However, development of the Internet as a major mcdium of publication has stretched the capacity of search engines to cope with rctrieval. Consequently, there has been interest in applying existing systems of knowledge organization to clcctronic resources. Unfortunately, the classification systems havc been adopted without a full...

The paper presents the results of a pilot study of 15 lawyers at various stages of their career. We examine novice lawyers at the beginning of their career and compare their concepts of task, information and information seeking with the concepts of task, information and information seeking of expert lawyers who have practiced law for more than 7 years. We observed that while novice lawyers have separate problem recognition and solution structures, for expert lawyers these structures are...

This paper explores the use of hierarchical structure for classifying a large, heterogeneous collection of web content. The hierarchical structure is initially used to train different second-level classifiers. In the hierarchical case, a model is learned to distinguish a second-level category from other categories within the same top level. In the flat non-hierarchical case, a model distinguishes a second-level category from all other second-level categories. Scoring rules can further take...

L'extrait explique le rôle des juges et des juristes dans le développement de la common law avec une perspective historique.

To put it mildly, use of the Internet for legal research has proliferated. In addition, many reference librarians who wish to supplement LEXIS-NEXIS, CIS Academic Universe, Westlaw, and other commercial legal resources are turning to freely-available Web-based legal resources for the sake of comprehensiveness and cost savings. With this as background, the Idaho State University Reference Division staff surveyed the significant and freely available legal sites on the Web. They used Academic...

L’approche courante de West consiste à extraire des titres dans les jugements et à leur attribuer une cote selon un plan de classification. La seule manière de retrouver ce titre est cependant par mot-clé, ce qui rend la recherche approximative (p. 191-192), d'oû l'intérêt de nouvelles méthodes. West manipule l'entrée de plusieurs centaines de cas par jour, et chaque jugement publié doit passer par un rédacteur qui écrit le synopsis et les titres, et un analyste (un " c1assifieur ") qui...

We describe in this paper a boolean Information Retrieval system that adds word semantics to the classic word based indexing. Two of the main tasks of our system, namely the indexing and retrieval components, are using a combined word-based and sense-based approach. The key to our system is a methodology for building semantic representations of open text, at word and collocation level. This new technique, called semantic indexing, shows improved effectiveness over the classic word based indexing techniques.

Automatic Indexing and Abstracting of Document Texts summarizes the latest techniques of automatic indexing and abstracting, and the results of their application. It also places the techniques in the context of the study of text, manual indexing and abstracting, and the use of the indexing descriptions and abstracts in systems that select documents or information from large collections. Important sections of the book consider the development of new techniques for indexing and abstracting....

Dans ce travail nous proposons un système permettant de construire et de maintenir le contexte des interactions dans une interface web, pour des bases de données juridiques. Nous utilisons certains résultats du projet AustLIl (Australasian Lega Information Institute), un système d'inférence via le World Wide Web pour des bases de données juridiques. En particulier, nous nous servons de SINO, un moteur de recherche pour bases de données juridique (Greenleaf, Mowbray and King 1997)....

When invited by counsel in the 1947 case of Read v. J. Lyons & Co' to rationalise the law of tort, Lord Macmillan's response was to say that it was not the House of Lords' "task to rationalise the law of England" since arguments "based on legal consistency are apt to mislead for the common law is a practical code adapted to deal with the manifold diversities of human life, and as a great American judge [Holmes] has reminded us, 'the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience'...

In database or knowledge-base systems, query formulation languages are the means offered to users for accessing data or knowledge. Queries allow selection of data under particular, either simple or complex constraints, resulting from one or several structures. However, query formulation remains obstinately difficult for large classes of users. Indeed, with the exception of approaches facilitating syntax problems, there is a noticeable absence of models taking charge of the user through...

Given this focus on classification, a useful way of examining the significance of these and similar books - and of doctrinal scholarship generally - is by assessing the books in the light of certain general questions about the role of classification in law, in particular questions about the role of classification when it is done in the traditional or doctrinal sense. Three questions about classification in law will be addressed: (I) Why (classify)?, (II) How (to classify)?, and (III) What...

L'argumentation est une activité-clé du juriste et l'argumentation formelle est un sujet de recherche essentiel dans l'Intelligence artificielle et le Droit. Des modèles d'argumentation juridique peuvent être créés de diverses manières. Une approche relativement récente consiste à utiliser l'ordinateur comme outil d'assistance, ce que l'on nomme l'argumentation juridique assistée par ordinateur (Gordon, Lodder, Loui) ou la dialectique informatique. La recherche part du constat qu'un...

Les ontologies jouent un rôle important dans la création des systèmes d'informations juridiques, car elles permettent de définir la structure de la base de connaissance en construction. Les différences que l'on constate entre ontologies reflètent les différences dans les tâches, les méthodes et le domaine. Une application particulière rend certaines ontologies mieux adaptées que d'autres. Une bibliothèque regroupant de telles ontologies pourrait grandement contribuer au développement de...

Subject indexes are believed to have been invented in France in the 13th century, yet many modern French books lack such indexes. A two-pronged research project conducted in France in July 1999 aimed to examine manuscripts of the earliest indexes in libraries throughout the country and interview book publishers to determine their indexing policies. Manuscript book indexes produced in France, primarily in the Latin language and in the domain of religion, are works of extraordinary beauty,...