Input Requested: Survey on Legislative XML
A request for survey participants who are familiar with XML and law. To comment on the Crown Legislative Markup Language (CLML) which is used for the content at: legislation.gov.uk.
Background:
By way of background, the Crown Legislation Mark-up Language (CLML) is used to represent UK legislation in XML. It’s the base format for all legislation published on the legislation.gov.uk website. We make both the schema and all our data freely available for anyone to use, or re-use, under the UK government’s Open Government Licence. CLML is currently expressed as a W3C XML Schema which is owned and maintained by The National Archives. A version of the schema can be accessed online at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/schema/legislation.xsd . Legislation as CLML XML can be accessed from the website using the legislation.gov.uk API. Simply add “/data.xml” to any legislation content page, e.g. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/1/data.xml .
Why is this important for topic maps?
Would you believe that the markup semantics of CLML are different from the semantics of United States Legislative Markup (USLM)?
That’s just markup syntax differences. Hard to say what substantive semantic variations are in the laws themselves.
Mapping legal semantics becomes important when the United States claims extraterritorial jurisdiction for the application of its laws.
Or when the United States uses its finance laws to inflict harm on others. (Treasury’s war: the unleashing of a new era of financial warfare by Juan Carlos Zarate.)
Mapping legal semantics won’t make U.S. claims any less extreme but may help convince others of a clear and present danger.