Legal Text Interpretation: Identifying Hohfeldian Relations from Text

The paper investigates the extent of the support semi-automatic analysis can provide for the specific task of assigning Hohfeldian relations of Duty, using the General Architecture for Text Engineering tool for the automated extraction of Duty instances and the bearers of associated roles. The outcome of the analysis supports scholars in identifying Hohfeldian structures in legal text when performing close reading of the texts. A cyclic workflow involving automated annotation and expert feedback will incrementally increase the quality and coverage of the automatic extraction process, and increasingly reduce the amount of manual work required of the scholar.