In my last blog, I covered a lot of the variations I find around the world. I do a lot of document analysis, working to map various legislative traditions into Akoma Ntoso. Doing the job right sometime means understanding nuances and resisting the temptation to apply rules learned elsewhere.

There are a number of terms that often require very careful consideration:

• In legislation in the English speaking world, the “middle” layer is usually the Section. Numbering is sequential starting at the beginning of the document and continuing to the end of the document regardless of the hierarchy above. In non-English speaking countries, this level is the Article and the Section is a upper level like a Part or Chapter.
  
  However, there are exceptions. In the US Constitution, this practice is not followed. In the US Constitution, sections are found in articles. This arrangement is the opposite way around to European legislation where articles are found in sections. This doesn’t really make a lot of sense. In a newspaper, articles are found in sections of the paper like the business or sports section. This same structure exists in HTML5. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson and the other framer’s of the US Constitution were trying to add a bit of European flair to their work, but got the order backwards. Many Constitutions around the world are modelled on the US Constitution and adopt the same unusual Article/Section arrangement.
  
  One quirk I came across lately was most confusing and presented an interesting conundrum. While the prevailing practices in the jurisdiction were British in tradition, a few statutes adopted a more European style. The sections were numbered sequentially and always referred to as sections. However, the numbering never explicitly calls out the level type (e.g. the section number is “2.” rather than “Sec 2.”) Nonetheless, knowing that this level is a Section, we had modelled the sections as akn:section. However, we then discovered a small handful of statutes that had upper level sections as found in European legislation (e.g. SECTION 3). So, in these documents, there were two complete difference types of constructs both called sections. While this was probably an error caused by drafting rules not being enforced properly, the result was enacted law containing this error. We ended up using an akn:hcontainer with a @name = section to create another distinct type of Section.

• One common area of confusion is the use of plurals. We see this all over the place. For example, in some jurisdictions, the Section type construct is known as a Regulation and the document containing them is called Regulations. Other jurisdictions refer to the sections as Section, and the document itself is the Regulation.
  
  This same practice is found with rules, but in that case, the section type construct is called a Rule and the document is known as Rules. In this case, this naming practice is nearly universal.
  
  We find this same inconsistency with Bill Amendments. In some jurisdiction, each individual change is referred to as an Amendment and the collective whole are Amendments or an Amendment List. In other jurisdictions the individual changes are known as Instructions and the collective whole is the Amendment. This difference can be confusing when mapping to Akoma Ntoso as that schema implies the former convention as this is more common in Europe while the latter approach is more prevalent in the U.S.

• Another area of confusion is the difference between an Annex and a Schedule. The European concept of an Annex is separate document treated somewhat as an attachment to the base document. However, a Schedule is different — it clearly a part of the Body of the document. While it is most often found at the end of the body of the document, in some jurisdictions which complex hierarchical structures, schedules can also be found at the end of any upper hierarchical level. This construct is one that cannot currently be modelled in Akoma Ntoso without resorting to akn:hcontainer although the proposed next version includes akn:schedule to rectify this.

Mapping a jurisdiction’s legislation into Akoma Ntoso can be tricky. The mapping isn’t always straightforward and almost always an exhaustive analysis of the entire body of existing laws will reveal that there are no hard and fast rules. As existing law can’t just be “fixed” to be consistent, it is often necessary to come up with creative ways to handles the oddities that are found.