The Legal-RDF Ontologies are organized into components that, once taken together, constitute a 'play',
that is, a thespian production.
This approach is sensible because the goal of modeling is to reflect the real world to the maximum extent
possible: the sum of social interactions is a dramatic production. There are six elements involved with
a play: its actors and their roles, its scenes with their props, and its dramas that support its themes.
Associated with these elements are the play's scripts and other documentats concerning the play.
These elements are, in effect, unqualified concepts. Legal-RDF therefore has in addition to these
unqualified concepts, a separate vocabulary for qualified concepts. An example of a 'qualified concept' is a
'PurchasableThing' and an associated "PurchasedThing', both of which can be attached (explicitly or implicitly) to any resource.
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Basic Grammar
This ontology is the foundation upon which all other ontologies are built.
It contains (a) class and meta-class definitions for key grammatical concepts
(e.g., "direct object") that are referenced by other Legal RDF ontologies
(b) predicate definitions, that is, connecting-elements such as "has" and "had"
(c) terms for currencies, languages, and measurements and
(d) Dublin Core attributes.
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Quantity Vocabulary
This ontology has classes for all types of numeric strings that occur in documents.
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Quality Vocabulary
This ontology contains classes that are used to qualify other classes.
Qualification can be stated either in terms of a capability that the qualified-thing
has, or an innate quality had by the qualified-thing. In many cases, the 'quality'
of a thing is interpretable as a 'state of existence' which it occupies over a period of time.
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Actor Vocabulary
Every Actor is either a Person or a Group. A Person is further categorized with demographic and occupational designations.
A Group is further categorized by Organization, Family, Nation, and others. An Organization has,
among its subclasses, the concept of Institution, which is categorized as either Private or Public.
A Corporation is a PrivateInstitution, while a Government is a PublicInstitution.
Status:
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Drama Vocabulary
A Drama is the general category for Actions and Events.
Status: Classes representing 300+ types of events have been established.
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Prop Vocabulary
A Prop is the general category for products and for types of property.
The Product ontology is (to be) derived from the NAFTA treaty's
classifications of products (expected to be published shortly by the Department of Commerce).
Property includes personal and real property;
of note is that intellectual property subtypes items that are creative artifacts, for instance, an "Ontology".
Status: Awaiting Commerce Dept publication, however an old list of
products, organized per NAICS, is released for review.
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Role Vocabulary
A Role is the general category for work-roles (occupations), legal roles, family roles,
and others.
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Script Vocabulary
A Script is the general category for types of documents, including classess relating to their structure,
Quantity, and terms concerning its presentation.
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Scene Vocabulary
A Scene is the general category for locations and eras, that is, time and place. The Location class
is divided into Land and Facility. The subclasses for Facility are derived in large part from the
facilities defined by the NAFTA treaty, however organized using the Real Estate Information Standards'
categories.
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Theme Vocabulary
Two types of Themes are now identified: Economics and Law. The Economics category
encompasses business services and industries. The ZIP file contains a PDF of all NAICS classes.
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