A new version 04 of the URN:LEX standard for legal identifiers has been posted. The new version is dated 5 September 2011, and expires 8 March 2012.
The new version has been published by Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research Council (ITTIG/CNR); Italy, National Centre for ICT in Public Administration (CNIPA) [now DigitPA]; Brazil, Federal Senate, IT Department (PRODASEN); and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School (LII).
The contacts for the draft are Professor Dr. Enrico Francesconi & Pierluigi Spinosa, both of ITTIG/CNR, and Caterina Lupo of CNIPA/DigitPA.
According to the new version:
The purpose of the “lex” namespace is to assign an unequivocal identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. To the extent of this namespace, “sources of law” include any legal document within the domain of legislation, case law and administrative acts or regulations; moreover potential “sources of law” (acts under the process of law formation, as bills) are included as well. Therefore “legal doctrine” is explicitly not covered.
The authors have also developed a URN schema handler which can be used in conjunction with URN:LEX.
The new version of Juricaf uses URN:LEX URNs http://bit.ly/qIlnI3
Grant Vergottini has developed a new identifier model, based on URN:LEX, for his Legix.info site http://legix.info/