Definitions Extractions from the Code of Federal Regulations by Mohamma M. AL Asswad, Deepthi Rajagopalan, and Neha Kulkarni. (poster)
From a description of the project:
Imagine you’re opening a new business that uses water in the production cycle. If you want to know what federal regulations apply to you, you might do a Google search that leads to the Code of Federal Regulations. But that’s where it gets complicated, because the law contains hundreds of regulations involving water that are difficult to narrow down. (The CFR alone contains 13898 references to water.) For example, water may be defined one way when referring to a drinkable liquid and another when defined as an emission from a manufacturing facility. If the regulation says your water must maintain a certain level of purity, to which water are they referring? Definitions are the building blocks of the law, and yet pouring through them to find what applies to you is frustrating to an average business owner. Computer automation might help, but how can a computer understand exactly what kind of water you’re looking for? We at the Legal Information Institute think this is pretty important challenge, and apparently Google does too.
Looking forward to learning more about this project!
BTW, this is the same Code of Federal Regulations that some members of Congress don’t think needs to be indexed.
Knowing what legal definitions apply is a big step towards making legal material more accessible.