Legal and government data notes
Some reference
On different kinds of rules and regulations, laws, guidance, etc.
| This article/section is a stub — probably a pile of half-sorted notes and is probably a first version, is not well-checked, so may have incorrect bits. (Feel free to ignore, or tell me) |
Names and abbreviations of laws
| This article/section is a stub — probably a pile of half-sorted notes and is probably a first version, is not well-checked, so may have incorrect bits. (Feel free to ignore, or tell me) |
There is often a long, descriptive name (the intitule).
The last article of a law should mention how you should refer to / cite it (aanhaling) - though note not everything has such a citeertitel.
Documents referring to laws are free to use some alternative, often shorter names to do so
...so expect to see references use closeby variations, e.g.
- due to dates in the name
- onjuist spatiegebruik
- spelling variants
- variations in function words
There are also unofficial names.
While "Mammoetwet van 1968" seems a specific reference,
there is nothing called that, nor do documents refer to it like that.
It refers to Wet op het voortgezet onderwijs and is a nickname indicating sheer size[1].
Abbreviations
Settling a citeertitel does not include an abbreviation - abbreviations of laws do not seem to be in any way official.
People still use abbreviations for practical reasons, mostly for more-often-cited things. Even regelingen occasionally use abbreviations in their citeertitels.
Because of the unofficial status, there are are a lot of details that seem down to convention.
For example capitalisation:
- it seems that before the 90s (e.g. Ar in 1992?(verify)), abbreviations tended to be all capitalized,
- since the 90s it's often just the first letter, and you can expect either, not based on the age of the specific law.
- separately, longer ones and non-initialism abbreviations also tend to have only the first letter as a capital (e.g. Wajong ("Wet arbeidsongeschiktheidsvoorziening jonggehandicapten"), which seems to follow the logic that the full citeertitel should be written that way[2]. That capital is frequently W for wet, but not necessarily.
- Lawyers and public officials who refer to laws a lot seem to also do this initial-capital-only, seemingly with a little less regard to origin/age --
yet certain well-established abbreviations may still be all-capitalized.
Note that, being unofficial, abbreviations need not be unambiguous in a global sense. Say, WVO has been used in official documents to refer to
- Wet op het voortgezet onderwijs,
- Wet verontreiniging oppervlaktewateren, and
- Wet veiligheidsonderzoeken
...which makes e.g. "Formatiebesluit WVO" unclear at a glance (which technically seems to violate [Aanwijzing 4.25 Aanwijzingen voor de regelgeving Aanwijzing 4.25 lid 1 Formulering citeertitel - at least I don't see how that is unavoidable), but reading it will soon make that clear, probably in its begripsbepalingen.
Dutch data
There is overlap between sites, and e.g. between the KOOP's repositories.
This seems to come in part from the fact that different collections exist because of different laws, which happen to have overlapping requirements to the publication.
It e.g. seems that
- officielebekendmakingen.nl comes from the Bekendmakingwet (BWBR0004287) - algemene regels (verify)
- openoverheid.nl comes from Wet open overheid (BWBR0045754) (verify)
Data form, and collections
Existing projects
openkamer.org
Fairly clearly based on #Tweede_Kamer_Open_Data and a little more
Makes a much more browseable, usable interface.
See also:
wetzoek.nl
Fuzzier semantic-ish searching, allowing more natural queries to give reasonable results
woogle / wooverheid
Existing products
Related
Processing
FLINT and CALCULEMUS
See also:
- R van Doesburg et al. "CALCULEMUS: Towards a Formal Language for the Interpretation of Normative Systems" [3]
Hohfeld’s legal concepts
See also:
- L d’Almeida, "Fundamental Legal Concepts: The Hohfeldian Framework"