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Subject: RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] JXDDS Person Object
From: "Winters, Roger" <>
To: "'Chambers, Rolly'" <>,'Court Filing List' <>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:08:35 -0700
Title: [legalxml-courtfiling] JXDDS Person Object
I am still wondering why we would not try to keep it simple
by agreeing that a person or a thing can have a "role" appropriate
to a certain context, including a legal case. Although I don't know how
this would be modeled technically, I am comfortable with the notion that human
beings and things, animate or inanimate, can be said to play or have or be
assigned "roles." Some might prefer calling this a "function"
rather than a "role" when dealing with a thing, but it seems to me
to amount to the same thing. Roles and functions change with time and context.
The point is to know which role applies to the case in point and to give the
person or thing the metadata attribute naming the role within the context of
the case or, more particularly, of the court document in which it appears.
The context of the case should show whether it makes sense
to say that a certain role can be assigned to a person or thing. While a thing
like the Bank of America Tower could have a role of "victim" or "evidence"
or "plaintiff," it would make no sense to assign the Tower the role
of "judge."
Rolly and others have called out a number of possible role
names relevant to court matters. Isn't the point of our work to define
each distinct role specifically enough so we could tell in a given case who has
that role? Wouldn't we all use the same tag for a given role, e.g., for "defense
attorney" defined as "legal counsel for an accused person in a
criminal matter," regardless of the title used for that role in a given place,
e.g., "Defender," "Public Defender," "Mouthpiece,"
"Counsel for the Accused?"
A person can have, but might not have a "title"
that goes with a "role" the person is playing. The person who has
the "judicial officer" role would usually have a formal title, e.g.,
"Judge J. Jones," "Magistrate Barney Fife." The person
who is in the role of "victim" in a criminal matter would not have
a formal title--although the person might be referred to as "victim
Winters" to distinguish him from "victim Chambers." Later in
the case, it might be discovered that "victim Winters" is actually "perpetrator
Winters," who would then start having other roles like "defendant,"
"convict," "inmate," and "parolee," used as
appropriate in context of the series of documents that record the proceedings
and disposition of his case and subsequent events.)
If what I'm asserting is not helpful to deciding how
the JXDDS Person Object relates to what we are trying to accomplish, please say
so and let's move right along. I'm hoping, however, that we could
avoid adding categories of metadata (e.g., "Actor" or "Citizen")
that, I suspect, might not add real value to our enterprise.
Roger
Winters
Electronic Court Records Manager
King County
Department of Judicial Administration
516 Third Avenue, E-609 MS: KCC-JA-0609
Seattle, Washington 98104
V: (206) 296-7838 F: (206) 296-0906
