Automatic semantics extraction in law documents

Normative texts can be viewed as composed by formal partitions (articles, paragraphs, etc.) or by semantic units containing fragments of a regulation (provisions). Provisions can be described according to a metadata scheme which consists of provision types and their arguments. This semantic annotation of a normative text can make the retrieval of norms easier. The detection and description of the provisions according to the established metadata scheme is an analytic intellectual activity aiming at classifying portions of a normative text into provision types and to extract their arguments. Automatic facilities supporting this intellectual activity are desirable. Particularly, in this paper, two modules able to qualify fragments of a normative text in terms of provision types and to extract their arguments are presented. Copyright 2005 ACM.