Automatic Classification of Sentences in Dutch Laws

  • Authors:

  • Emile de Maat;Radboud Winkels

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Amsterdam, Leibniz Center for Law, {demaat, winkels}@uva.nl;University of Amsterdam, Leibniz Center for Law, {demaat, winkels}@uva.nl

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2008 conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems: JURIX 2008: The Twenty-First Annual Conference
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The work described here builds on [1], where we presented a categorisation of norms or provisions in legislation. We claimed that the categories are characterized by the use of typical sentence structures and that this would enable automatic detection and classification. In this paper we present the results of experiments in such automatic classification of provisions. We have defined fourteen different categories of provisions, and compiled a list of 81 sentence structures for those categories from twenty Dutch laws. Based on these structures, a parser was used to classify the sentences in fifteen different Dutch laws, classifying 94% of 476 sentences correctly. It compares well with other, statistical approaches. An important improvement of our classifier will be the distinction of principal and auxiliary sentences.