Qualitative methods in the characterization of legal documents

2020

introduction1 This study aims at investigating the sociohistorical path of the Brazilian legal booklet (layman’s law guide), from the appearance and propagation of those genres that contributed to its formation until the development of current educational booklets which explain law to layman readers. To fulfill this objective, we will observe three major historical and social events which influenced the development of this genre until it assumed its present form. First of all, however, it is important to clarify what “legal booklet” stands for, as well as which hypothesis could be applied to the comprehension and study of this genre. Despite the countless possibilities of materialization, nowadays legal booklets can be understood as participants of the discursive constellation of educational or informative booklets, defined by Mendonça (2004, p. 1,278) as publications “destined to inform the population about their rights, duties, and the ways to prevent diseases, accidents, etc. The...

Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej, 2012

This article deals with the implications of the widespread practice of use of legal databases in Polish judicial practice. Apart from the undeniable positive effects of development of an electronic civilization, the article deals with the negative effects of use of databases. This is because a conflict arises between the possibilities offered by the latest technology in the form of easy access to legal texts, commentaries and thousands of judicial rulings, and the unique historical experience of the judiciary in a former communist country, methods of legal interpretation sustained by legal positivism, and domination by a syllogistic model for application of the law. All results in dysfunction of legal databases. A kind of “hybrid interpretation of law” is formed, which is a combination of a legacy, the effects of transformation of the economy and the system, as well as the new rules of law, on the one hand, and the ideology of bound judicial decision on the other. The nature of the ...

SMU Science and Technology Law Review, 2018

This essay introduces the philosophy of legal information (PLI), which is a response to the radical changes brought about in philosophy by the information revolution. It reviews in some detail the work of Luciano Floridi, who is an influential advocate for an information turn in philosophy that he calls the philosophy of information (PI). Floridi proposes that philosophers investigate the conceptual nature of information as it currently exists across multiple disciplines. He shows how a focus on the informational nature of traditional philosophical questions can be transformative for philosophy and for human self-understanding. The philosophy of legal information (PLI) proposed here views laws as a body of information that is stored, manipulated, and analyzed through multiple methods, including the computational methodologies. PLI offers resources for evaluating the ethical and political implications of legal infomatics (also known as "legal information systems"). This essay introduces PLI. Parts I and II describe Floridi's philosophy of information. First, Part I introduces the transformation in the concept of information that occurred in the twentieth century through the work of Alan Turning and Claude Shannon. Part II describes Floridi's approaches to traditional questions in epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Part III applies PI to the analysis of legal positivism. It suggests that PLI is a viable project that has potential for transforming the understanding law in the information age.

Knowledge Organization at the Interface, 2020

This article aims to present two different approaches related to the study of types of documents. Our research problem is to understand to what extent the identification of the document type reveals the persistent representation of the archival document. We will present two different approaches related to the study of types of documents: one about the types of documents as a social product, which represents social practices and recognizes that social practices control not only the behavior of the individual, but also the structure and form of the document. From this perspective we will analyze documents from personal collections created in the 19th century. The other approach focuses on the organizational environment of a federal public agency and how document types can be used as an instrument of transparency in a records management system. The research will focus on digital documents created in an electronic system. The study shows that document types also provide the basis for classification systems that are the foundation for acquisition, organization, description and evaluation. Being the closest representation of the acts, the records are taken as evidence, that is, they reveal the persistent representation of the archival document, contributing to the organization of knowledge about the collections, their producers and about society in a given historical period.

International Journal of Management, Technology, and Social Sciences (IJMTS), 2019

Human beings possess instinct of inquisitiveness in cases of confronting with the unknown aspects of life which probe to attain greater understanding on such uncertainty. This inquisitiveness is the method which man employs for obtaining knowledge is termed as research. It is the art of scientific enquiry into new facts conducted in any branch of knowledge. Generally, Research is the movement from the known towards the unknown to be called as the voyage of discovery. It originally contributes to the existing stock of knowledge facilitating its advancement. Truth is pursued with the help of study, observation, comparison and experiment. Systematic study of the law through doctrinal and non-doctrinal research methods considers to be the socio-legal studies aiming to analyze the impact of legal mechanism on the social system. This paper introduces into the fundamentals of legal research, socio-legal studies, conceptual framework on doctrinal research, steps of doctrinal studies, limitations and differences between doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal research methods.

Perspectives of Law and Public Administration, 2019

This epistemological approach was generated by the theoretical and practical necessity of analyzing the legal nature of the approval documents required for the registration and/or operation of commercial companies. The evolution of companies is symbiotic to that of the society and has a major economic, legal and social impact. According to its object of activity (environmental statement, banking company) or operations carried out in the process of operation (merger, sale of agricultural land, etc.) the entity must obtain approval documents with complex legal effects. The material is part of the multidisciplinarity criterion and uses several methods of scientific research, of which predominantly logical and comparative methods. The outcome of the research is presented in a gradual and exemplary approach, its conclusions being substantiated by reference to normative provisions, doctrine opinions and legal practice.

One of the important evidence proving the claims in legal document. The document has been providing various definitions in the sciences and in other words, this concept is considered from the perspective of different sciences. In law as well as the traditional concept of document ins 1284 of the Civil Code defines which means any written document that is referred to as the fight or disposal. This concept is true in the case of written documents. But with the development of communications technology and the development of e-commerce transactions and Internet Treaties, the concept store documents for a new phenomena Evidence was introduced. Special documents to electronic documents in the system is evidence of the important issues of law. Especially with the adoption of ecommerce law and the position of the law, raising these issues is crucial.

Digital Ethics Lab Yearbook, 2019

This chapter outlines some of the key developments regarding publication and communication of legal rules and standards (i.e. legal information) to show that dissemination of legal information is reliant on how we design the entire model of its publication. In doing so, it analyses paradigmatic models of publication as they appeared in the prehistorical, historical, and hyperhistorical stages of human evolution. These models demonstrate how legal information was delivered to its intended addressees, i.e. to those who were expected to obey the published laws. It also demonstrates that the progress regarding these publication models was driven by efficiency and sustainability considerations. The currently prevailing model of publication is, however, inefficient and unsustainable due to an unnecessary multiplication of intermediaries facilitating communication of legal information. This problem is even more apparent in the context of increasing digitalisation of legal information and emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs). The chapter argues that, in this light, it is appropriate to consider revising the entire publication model and not only some aspects of it. An addressee-centric publication model is outlined as a potential solution to the problem. The proposed model requires active delivery of a relevant subset of digitalised legal information to its intended addressee in a similar way as targeted online advertising. Unlike the existing research that promotes personalisation of law (personalised legal information), this chapter advocates personalisation of the publication model.

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 1994

Citizens are frequently asked to make commitments by signing contracts and legal documents that frequently contain phraseology and jargon (sometimes called legalese) that highly-educated citizens often do not understand. In recent years, human factors professionals have become intimately concerned with the design of product-related documentation and safety communications (e.g., warnings), and through research have offered ways to improve these materials. However, there is apparently no human factors research on the design and evaluation of legal contracts and other similar documents. The purpose of the present research was to begin to assess some of the factors related to people's reading and understanding of legal documents. Study 1 examined the types of legal documents that people sign, how often they sign them, how carefully they read them, and whether they understand them. Ninety-two individuals were asked to complete a survey addressing these issues. While it was reported that the contracts were read moderately carefully and were understood moderately well, the levels were not as high as one would expect given the importance of the documents and the education level of the participants in this study (who had, on average, approximately two years of college). Also, 96% of the sample believed that legal documents could be improved and provided specific suggestions on how this might be accomplished. In Study 2, 32 participants rated the set of potential improvements to legal documents that had been suggested by Study 1's participants. The results confirmed the first study's pattern of findings. Implications for average citizens' lack of comprehension of contracts and other legal documents are discussed with a specific focus on the role research might have on their improvement.

Although legal informatics is on the periphery of jurisprudence, it can make a significant impact on the centre in respect of legal dogmatics. We believe that the impact from legal informatics can be reached through situational legal visualisation and situational terms, for example, by correcting the boundaries of legal terms. The latter is the subject matter of legal theory and hence contributes to the centre of jurisprudence. This paper makes analogy between Begriffsjurisprudenz in the nineteenth century and legal ontologies of the present, and stresses a situational treatment of law in addition to a normative one. Therefore both situational contents and institutional contents are important when representing legal semantics within legal informatics. However, the differences between legal norms, texts and documents have to be taken into account. Legal norms are interpretative products whereas legal documents are tangible products and are represented according to documentary rules. ...