legalxml-courtfiling — archive

[Rolly Chambers]

I'm not sure about moving cheese - in fact I'm having trouble finding it. I checked the Justice and Public Safety XML Data Element Definitions Draft 0.1.0 (April 26, 2002) ( http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-sc/200205/pdf00000.pdf ) and confirmed that it does not include either an <actor> or a <role> element, but does include a <person> element. I also checked the Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard (22 July 2002) ( http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/legalxml-courtfiling/documents/2207 2002cf1-1.pdf) and confirmed that it does not include a <person> element, but does include <actor> and <role> elements. All this checking also confirmed that both the Justice Data Element Definitions (I'm assuming this is the current data dictionary -- the "DD") and the CF 1.1 Standard include a <personalIDNumber> element and that neither includes a <personalIdentification> element. This has me wondering whether I'm looking at the same data dictionary and CF 1.1 standard that Gary has in mind. On balance, I agree with the point that a person can have multiple roles in a legal proceeding. Finding an effective way to use XML to describe the various roles that a person can have is not easy. One reason for the difficulty is that a role depends on context, which can change readily. For instance, one person may be a child, daughter, sibling, sister, parent, and mother in the context of a family; a witness, a plaintiff, and a party in the context of a lawsuit; or a driver, an owner, and a victim in the context of an auto accident. I disagree that using multiple <role> elements to describe the roles of a person or actor is better than using the proposed subclasses, such as "plaintiff," "victim," or "witness." It is as easy to describe a person as having the subclass "witness" (e.g. <person><witness/></person>) as having the role of "witness" (e.g. <actor><role>witness</role></actor>). One advantage of the subclass approach is that it provides greater constraint and consistency in describing a person as a "witness". It also provides more effective standardization - there would be only one "witness" subclass element, but there could be "witness," "Witness," or "WITNESS" role values based just on differences in capitalization. This feature of the proposed subclass approach is a definite plus as I see it. Using a <person> element also would align the CF 1.1 DTD more closely with the Justice Data Element Definitions. An obvious problem with the proposed "person object"/subclass approach is that incorporating it would require change to the CF1.1 DTD, which is inconvenient, even if it is a better approach. Also, the proposed subclasses certainly would benefit from refining then to include more meaningful names (which the proposal invites). Finally, the <person> element clearly would not be appropriate to use to use for organizations, such as corporations, associations, or partnerships, so there would continue to be a need for element(s) containing information about "non-persons." I think the benefits of the proposed "person object" and subclass approach weigh in favor of a change. I respect that others may find the inconveniece of a change outweighs the benefits. Rolly Chambers