CriMOnto: A generalized domain-specific ontology for modeling procedural norms of the Lebanese criminal law

Abstract

Criminal (or penal) law regulates offenses, offenders, and legal punishments. Modeling criminal law is gaining much attention in the ontology engineering community. However, a significant aspect is neglected: the explicit representation of procedural knowledge. Procedural norms, such as regulative norms, are addressed to agents in the normative system. They govern the different interactions among these agents. In this study, we propose a formal and faithful representation of the procedural aspect of legal norms in the context of the Lebanese Criminal Code. A modular domain-specific ontology named CriMOnto is developed for this purpose. CriMOnto is grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and the legal core ontology UFO-L by applying the Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling (ODCM) process. Conceptual Ontology Patterns (COPs) are reused from UFO and UFO-L to build the hierarchical and procedural content of the ontology. CriMOnto is validated as a formal ontology and evaluated using a dual evaluation approach. The potential use of CriMOnto for lightweight rule-based decision support is discussed in this study.