From the webpage:
Akoma Ntoso (“linked hearts“ in Akan language of West Africa) defines a “machine readable“ set of simple technology-neutral electronic representations (in XML format) of parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents.
Akoma Ntoso is a set of simple, technology-neutral XML machine-readable descriptions of official documents such as legislation, debate record, minutes, etc. that enable addition of descriptive structure (markup) to the content of parliamentary and legislative documents.
Akoma Ntoso XML schema make “accessible” structure and semantic components of digital documents supporting the creation of high value information services to deliver the power of ICTs to support efficiency and accountability in the parliamentary, legislative and judiciary contexts.
Akoma Ntoso is an initiative of “Africa i-Parliament Action Plan” (www.parliaments.info) a programme of UN/DESA.
Be aware that a new TC has been proposed at OASIS, LeDML, to move Akoma Ntoso towards becoming an international standard.
Applying Akoma Ntoso to the United States Code is a post by Grant Vergottini about his experiences converting the US Code markup into Akoma Ntoso.
Markup can, not necessarily will, simplify the task of creating topic maps of legal materials.