Semantic model for legal resources: Annotation and reasoning over normative provisions

A Semantic Web approach in the legal domain is presented in terms of a model of normative provisions and related axioms. In particular, relation between provisions are identified and modelled by introducing design patterns able to describe Hohfeldian legal fundamental relations and by a query approach able to deal with relations between provisions instances. Examples of semantic annotation of legal textual resources using RDF/OWL standards, as well as advanced access and reasoning facilities over provisions using SPARQL, are shown. The main benefit of the approach is represented by the ability to keep the complexity of the problem within a description logic computational tractability.