Legislative metadata based on semantic formal models

The Law Making Environment system for planning, wording and managing legislative sources is made up of editing and search supporting tools. In order to handle the semantics of legislative sources, two interacting models have been developed: a rule model and a lexicon of concepts. Semantic draft and search supporting tools are based on both models, in a way that makes their interaction possible. A rule theory has been developed, which can describe the illocutionary profile of legislative texts through meta data. As far as concepts are concerned, a conceptual dictionary has been also created. Through the search tool the user is enabled to query for instances of obligations related to particular actions or subjects, described in the query through the domain ontology. The metaSearch tool shows the related rules and additionally, if requested, finds implicit information, providing the user with a wide account on the subject and playing to some extent the role of an advice system.