A Question Answer System for the Mauritian Judiciary

Abstract

Law is a research-oriented profession and legal research is an activity that costs time and money. Information Technology is now revolutionising the way in which legal research is being done. In this work, we have implemented an online web-based question answer system for the Mauritian Judiciary where users can enter their queries freely using natural language. The system processes the queries by extracting relevant keywords and discards those that do not carry much information and then returns the relevant sections of law which contain these keywords or keyphrases. The system also returns a list of relevant Supreme Court cases. The user can decide on the number of results to be displayed. The user can also wish to have only the name of the relevant acts be displayed for certain keywords or keyphrases. The system does not require the user to know how the law is structured or how the knowledge-base is built in order to benefit from it. The portal can also be accessed via mobile devices without compromising any of its facilities or user-friendliness. It is hoped that the availability of information at the click of a button will help the human resources at the Mauritian Judiciary to become more efficient and this will contribute to the reduction of delays in the disposal of cases.