Extend the description of Legislation

[tfrancart]

This is a continuation of #1743 , itself a continuation of the initial proposal #1156 that led to the introduction of the type Legislation.

As time as passed, the European Legislation Identifier (ELI) model has evolved and we are now considering pushing the equivalent enhancements to schema.org.

The proposal will cover the following aspects:

• Legislation repeals/amends/corrects/commences another Legislation (subproperties of existing legislationChanges;
• date of applicability
• re-publication of national legislation in regional official gazettes
• identifying and describing Legislation articles themselves (and other subdivisions inside the content);
• maybe other items, like "countersigned", or "delegation"
• and any other comment the community could have about the current Legislation modelling in schema.org

[hmartim]

Great news!
Is there a forecast of when the proposal will be presented?
We already have some suggestions to offer.

[RichardWallis]

See issue schemaorg/suggestions-questions-brainstorming#7 for the context of the move from the main Schema.org issue tracker to this repository.

[tfrancart]

Reviving this issue after quite a long time, COVID, and recent publication of European Legislation Identifier ontology 1.3.

To make things clear as stated in schemaorg/suggestions-questions-brainstorming#7 : this issue is associated with "a serious intent to implement new schema designs in major user-facing platform(s)" (here, EU Official Journal portals). ELI stakeholders (as listed in ELI register ) are interested to disseminate structured data through schema.org (as they already do it in ELI), and implementations already exist e.g. in Luxembourg or Ireland (e.g. look at the source code for an Irish Act).

The ELI Taskforce thus proposes to enrich the current Legislation description with the properties in red in the diagram below:

The properties are derived from the ones in the ELI ontology documented in this Excel table. Here is a listing:

• New links :

  • legislationAmends (subPropertyOf legislationChanges): Another legislation that this legislation amends, introducing legal changes.
  • legislationRepeals (subPropertyOf legislationChanges): Another legislation that this legislation repeals (cancels, abrogates).
  • legislationCommences (subPropertyOf legislationChanges): Another legislation that this one sets into force.
  • legislationCorrects: Another legislation in which this one introduces textual changes, like correction of spelling mistakes, with no legal impact (for modifications that have legal impact, use legislationAmends).
  • legislationEnsuresExecutionOf (subPropertyOf legislationChanges) : Indicates that this Legislation ensures the implementation of another Legislation, for example by modifying national legislations so that they do not contradict to an EU regulation or decision. This implies a legal meaning. Transpositions of EU Directive should be captured with legislationChanges

• legislationDateOfApplicability: The date at which the Legislation becomes applicable. This can sometimes be distinct from the date of entry into force : a text may come in force today, and state it will become applicable in 3 months.

• legislationCountersignedBy: The person or organization that countersigned the legislation. Depending on the legal context, a countersignature can indicate that the signed authority undertakes to assume responsibility for texts emanating from a person who is inviolable and irresponsible, (for example a King, Grand Duc or President), or that the authority is in charge of the implementation of the text.

@RichardWallis : once this is reviewed and discussed by anyone interested, what is the new expected process ? should I make a PR with the proposed changes ? please advise.
@hmartim : other suggestions are welcome.

[hmartim]

Hi, @tfrancart.
These are important additions to legislation. With the new legislationDateOfApplicability property, it will now be possible to present the signature, validity and applicability dates. And with the new specialized properties of legislationChanges, we will be able to represent changes more precisely. Great work!

[hmartim]

It would be interesting to represent the level of the legislation in the legal system (as in the Kelsen pyramid). This information could be derived from the type of legislation, but as it is not standardized (it is specific to each country), interoperability, comparison, between countries is not possible. The values could be 0, 1, 2, etc., representing the level in the legal hierarchy.

[danbri]

As discussed on the mailing list with @tfrancart, since this issue is focussed clearly on making modest improvements to vocabulary that has already been accepted into the Schema.org "Pending" area, we should keep this discussion in the main issue list. I'll move it back there now.

[danbri]

@tfrancart - can you make a pull request? on the working assumption that we can still change things relatively freely in Pending. I think we did most of the setup work for this already in terms of agreeing patterns for property naming, etc...

[tfrancart]

@danbri I'm preparing the PR. Should I use the same "category" and "source" as the initial PR ("issue-1156") or should I track the additions in "issue-2698" ?

[tfrancart]

PR ready at #2723

[github-actions]

This issue is being tagged as Stale due to inactivity.

[hmartim]

@tfrancart, it would be interesting to list which draft legislation (considering a bill as a legislation) are discussing specific legislation (a law, an article, a subdivision in general).

Thus, it would be possible to know, for specific legislation, which proposed changes are in progress...for example, which draft legislation (legislation) are currently discussing changes to an article (legislation) in a law (legislation)

[hmartim]

And it would also be interesting to be able to relate a law (legislation) to the bill (legislation) that originated it.

[tfrancart]

Hello, yes and yes. This is in the scope of another ontology : ELI-DL (ELI for Draft Legislation) that you can read and download at https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eli-european-legislation-identifier/solution/eli-ontology-draft-legislation-eli-dl/release/final1

The 2 use-cases ("know which proposed changes are in progress" and "relate a law to the bill that originated it") are adressed in ELI-DL.

In the scope of this issue however, we simply want to update the Legislation extension with the current state of play with respect to ELI which covers only "passed" legislation (not bills / drafts). As this is still in pending state, we don't want to go too far for the moment, but this is the next step !

[tfrancart]

ping @danbri on your request I had prepared this PR one year ago - if everything is OK then it could be merge, otherwise let me know how the PR can be improved - Thanks

[hmartim]

This merge will be very important to allow the validator to recognize the new properties proposed for the legislation type, for example. This is being eagerly awaited.

[danbri]

Let’s get this in the next release then!

…

On Tue, 16 Nov 2021 at 15:03, hmartim ***@***.***> wrote: This merge will be very important to allow the validator to recognize the new properties proposed for the legislation type, for example. This is being eagerly awaited. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2698 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABJSGMRL6R5U4I2TPA6H23UMJXEHANCNFSM4Q75IXFA> .

[hmartim]

@danbri, great that it's in the next version...thanks!

[AlAl22]

Hello,
I'm not sure if I'm writing in the right place. But I have a question if this may be done with the existing 'legislation' (or a proposal, to make it work somehow, if currently this can not be done).
I'm trying to describe that an act (an international treaty) has different 'temporalCoverage's in respect of different 'spatialCoverage's (countries). And I don't understand how to do it. Being formally correct in some sense, this is misleding at the very least (because, despite the fact that this act came into force on the date indicated below, it was not in force from that day in respect of all indicated countries, and I don't understand how to indicate specific 'temporalCoverage's in respect of every single state):

"spatialCoverage": {
"@id": "SomeID",
"@type": "AdministrativeArea",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"addressCountry": [
"AL", "AD", "AM", "AT", "AZ", "BE", "BA", "BG", "HR", "CY", "CZ", "DK", "EE", "FI", "FR", "GE", "DE", "GR", "HU", "IS", "IE", "IT", "LV", "LI", "LT", "LU", "MT", "MD", "MC", "ME", "NL", "MK", "NO", "PL", "PT", "RO", "RU", "SM", "RS", "SK", "SI", "ES", "SE", "CH", "TR", "UA", "GB"
]
}
},
"legislationJurisdiction": {
"@id": "SomeID",
"@type": "AdministrativeArea"
},
"temporalCoverage": "1970-01-01/.."

[tfrancart]

This is a very specific use-case, not covered by the current proposed Legislation extension.
I know this can happen, and UK legislation is a good example of this I think, you can try to see how they model that in https://www.legislation.gov.uk/