1.1.The Purpose of Namespace LEX

The purpose of the LEX namespace is to assign a unique identifier in a well-defined format to documents that are sources of law. In this context, "sources of law" include any legal document within the domainof legislation, case law, administrative acts, or regulations. Potentialsources of law (acts under the process of law formation, such as bills) areincluded as well. "Legal doctrine", that is, the body of knowledge andtheoretical speculation typical of legal scholars (e.g., commentary onjudgment, jurisprudence review, commentary on legislation, encyclopedicentries, monographs, articles in magazines, manuals, etc.) is explicitly notcovered.¶

The identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only onthe content of the document itself and not its online availability, physical location, and access mode. The identifier itself is assignedby the jurisdiction of the identified document. A document thatis not available online may, nevertheless, have a LEX URN identifier.¶

The LEX URN may be used as a way to represent references (andmore generally, any type of relation) among various sources of law.In an online environment with resources distributed among differentweb publishers, LEX URNsallow a simplified global interconnection of legal documents by meansof automated resolution. LEX URNs consist of persistent and location-independent identifiers and are particularlyuseful when they can be mapped into or associated with locators suchas HTTP URLs. Moreover, LEX URN details can be used as a referenceto create persistent and location-independent identifiers that are HTTP-based[RFC3986].¶

1.2.Background

This specification of a unique identifier for legal documentsfollows a number of initiatives in the field of legal documentmanagement.¶

Since 2001, the Italian Government promoted the NormeInRete project through the National Center for Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Ministry of Justice, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). The NormeInRete project was aimed at introducing standards for describing and identifying sources of law using XML and URN techniques.¶

Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for thedescription of legal sources[FRAN]. Collaborationsbetween government, national research institutes, anduniversities have defined national XML standards for legal documentmanagement, as well as schemes for legal document identification.Outside of Europe, similar initiatives have addressed similar problems[FRAN]. Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema.¶

In today's information society, the processes of political, social, and economic integration of European Union (EU) Member States, as well as the increasing integration of the worldwide legal and economic processes, are causing a growing interest in the exchange of legal information at national and transnational levels.The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legalinformation amplifies the need for interoperability among legalinformation systems across national boundaries. A common, well-definedschema used to identify sources of law at an international level is anessential prerequisite for interoperability.¶

Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique. In several conferences (such as[LVI]), representatives of the Publications Office of the European Union (OP) have expressed the need for a unique identifier for sources of law, based on open standards and able to provide advanced modalities of document hyperlinking, with the aim of promoting interoperability among national and European institution information systems.Similar concerns have been raised by international groups concerned with free access to legal information, and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law[HCPIL] encourages State Parties to "adopt neutral methods of citation of their legal materials, including methods that are medium-neutral, provider-neutral and internationally consistent". In a similar direction, the CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at the European level, towards the definition of a standard interchange format for sources of law, including recommendations for defining naming conventions for them.¶

Additionally, the need for unique identifiers for sources of law is ofparticular interest in the domain of case law. This need is acutely felt within both common law systems (where cases are the main law sources) and civil law systems, because unique identifiers can provide integrated access to cases and legislation, as well as the ability to track the relationships between them. This domain is characterizedby a high degree of fragmentation in case law information systems,which usually lack interoperability.¶

In the European Union, the community institutions have stressed theneed for citizens, businesses, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges tobecome more aware of (directly applicable) EU laws and alsothe various national legal systems. The growing importance ofnational judiciaries for the application of community law wasstressed in the resolution of the European Parliament of 9 July 2008on the role of the national judge in the European judicial system.Similarly, the Council of the European Union has underlined the importance of cross-border access to national case law, as well as the need for its standardization, with a vision of a decentralized architecture with integrated access. The Working Party on Legal Data Processing (e-Law) of the Council of the European Union formed a task group to study the possibilities for improving cross-border access to national case law. Taking notice of the report of theWorking Party's task group, in 2009, the Council of the European Union decided toelaborate on a uniform European system for the identification ofcase law (i.e., the European Case-Law Identifier (ECLI)) and a uniform set of metadata based on the Dublin Core.¶

The Council of the European Union invited the Member States to introduce the European Legislation Identifier (ELI) in the legal information systems, which is an HTTP-based, Semantic Web-oriented identification system for legislation of the European Union and Member States.¶

The LEX identifier (also referred to in this text as "LEX name") isconceived to be general enough to provide guidance at the coreof the standard and offer sufficient flexibility to cover a wide variety ofneeds for identifying legal documents of different types,namely, legislative, case law, and administrative acts. Moreover, itcan be effectively used within a federative environment wheredifferent publishers (public and private) can provide their own items, in[FRBR] sense (seeSection 5.2),of a legal document (that is, there is more than one manifestation (seeSection 5.2) of the same legal document).¶

Specifications and syntax rules for the LEX identifier can also be usedfor HTTP-based naming conventions to cope withdifferent requirements in legal information management, for example,the need to have an identifier that is compliant with the Linked Open Dataprinciples.¶

This document supplements the required name syntax with a namingconvention that interprets all these recommendations into an originalsolution for sources of law identification.¶

1.3.General Characteristics of the System

The specifications in this document promote interoperabilityamong legal information systems by defining a namespaceconvention and structure that will create and manage identifiers forlegal documents. The identifiers are intended to have the following qualities:¶

• globally unique¶

• transparent¶

• reversible¶

• persistent¶

• location-independent¶

• language-neutral¶

These qualities facilitate management of legal documents anda mechanism for stable cross-collection and cross-countryreferences.¶

Transparency means that, for a given act and its relevant metadata(issuing authority, type of measure, etc.), it is possible to createa related URN that is able touniquely identify the act in a way that is reversible(from an act to its URN and from aURN to the act).¶

Language neutrality, in particular, is an important feature thatpromotes adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere toofficial language requirements. This specification providesguidance to both public and private groups that create, promulgate,and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize thepotential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, whilepreserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document typesand to respect the need for local control of collections by anequally diverse assortment of administrative entities.¶

The challenge is to provide the right amount guidance at thecore of the specification while providing sufficient flexibility tocover a wide variety of needs. LEX does this bysplitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses apreexisting standard specification ("country/jurisdiction namestandard") to indicate the country (or more generally, thejurisdiction) of origin for the legal document being identified; theremainder ("local-name") is intended for local use in identifyingdocuments issued in that country or jurisdiction.¶

The second part depends only on the identification system for sources of law operating in that nation, and it is mainly composed by formalized information related to the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details, and possibly the annex.¶

The identification system based on uniform names includes:¶

• A schema for assigning names capable of unambiguously representing any addressed source of law (namely legislation, case law, and administrative acts) issued by any authority (intergovernmental, supranational, national, regional, and local) at any time (past, present, and future).¶

• A resolution mechanism -- in a distributed environment -- that ties auniform name to the online location of the correspondingresource(s).¶

This document considers the first of these requirements. It alsocontains a few references to the architecture of the resolutionservice and to the corresponding software.¶

1.4.Linking a LEX Name to a Document

The LEX name is linked to the document through metadata, whichmay be specified as follows:¶

• Within the document itself through a specific element withinan XML schema or by a meta tag[W3C.HTML].¶

• Externally by means of a Resource Description Framework[W3C.RDF-SCHEMA]triple, a specific attribute in a database, etc.¶

At least one of these references is necessary to enable automatedconstruction, an update of catalogues (distributed and centralized),and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform nameof a document with its physical location. LEX assumes noparticular relationship between the originator of the document, itspublisher, the implementer of catalogues, or resolution services.¶

1.5.Use of LEX Names in References

LEX names can be used in references as an HREF attribute value of thehypertext link to the referred document.This link can be created in two ways:¶

• Manually inserting the link with the uniform name in the referring document. This is a burdensome procedure, especially fordocuments that are already online.¶

• Automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily)the link with the uniform name from references in the text usinga parser. This procedure offers more time savings, even if it is subject to acertain percentage of errors, since references are not alwaysaccurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless beacceptable for documents that are already published.¶

No matter which method is adopted, new documents producedin a certain format (for example, XML, XHTML, etc.) should express references through the uniform nameof the document referred to.¶

1.6.Definitions

The following terms are used in this document:¶

Source of Law:

A general concept that refers to legislation, caselaw, regulations, and administrative acts. In its broadest sense,the source of law is anything that can be conceived as theoriginator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document, "source oflaw" also refers to acts during their creation, such as bills, thatmight or might not become laws.¶

Jurisdictional Registrar:

An organization in anyjurisdiction that shares and defines the assignment of the main components of the resourceidentifier through which the identifier uniqueness is guaranteed.¶

1.7.Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14[RFC2119][RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

1.8.Syntax Used in This Document

This document uses a syntax that is based on the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)[RFC5234] meta-language, which is used in many RFCs.¶

1.9.Namespace Registration

The LEX namespace has been registered in the "Formal URNNamespaces" registry. SeeSection 12.¶

2.1.Identifier Structure

The identifier has the following hierarchical structure:¶

   "urn:lex:" NSS

where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows:¶

   NSS = jurisdiction ":" local-name

where:¶

jurisdiction:

Identifies the scope (state, regional,municipal, supranational, or organizational) where a set ofsources of law have validity. It is also possible to representinternational organizations (either states, publicadministrations, or private entities).¶

local-name:

The uniform name of the source of law in the country or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is common to the already-adopted schemas.Itrepresents all aspects of an intellectual production,from its initial idea, through itsevolution during the time, to its realization by differentmeans (paper, digital, etc.).¶

The jurisdiction element is composed of two specific fields:¶

   jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)

where:¶

jurisdiction-code:

Usually the identification code of the country where the source of law is issued. To facilitate the transparency of the name, the jurisdiction-code usually follows the rules of identification of other Internet applications, based on domain name (for details and special cases, seeSection 2.2).¶

Due to the differences in representation in the various languages of a country, the use of the standard[ISO.3166-1] is stronglyRECOMMENDED for easier identification of the country. Therefore, a LEX URN ID always begins with a sequence of ASCII characters: "urn:lex:ccTLD". For all the other components that follow the jurisdiction-code, the Jurisdictional Registrar decides the mode of representation (ASCII or UTF-8 percent-encoding; seeSection 3.4).¶

Where applicable, the domain name of the country or multinational orinternational organization is used. If such information is not available fora particular institution, a specific code will be defined (seeSection 2.2). Examples reported in this document arehypothetical and assume that the corresponding domain name is used for thejurisdiction-code.¶

jurisdiction-unit:

The possible administrative hierarchicalsub-structures defined by each country or organization within theirspecific legal system. This additional information can be used when two or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist(e.g., federal, state, and municipality level) and the same bodies maybe present in each jurisdiction. Therefore, the jurisdiction-unit differs for acts of the same type issued by similar authorities but pertain to different jurisdictions related to different geographical areas. An example can be the following:¶

• "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government),¶
• "br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of São (SU+00E3o) Paulo state)¶
• "br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo:decreto" (decree of Campinas municipality).¶

The following are fictitious examples of sources of law identifiers:¶

urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456    (Italian act)urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321    (French act)urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123    (Spanish act)urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963    (Glarus Swiss Canton decree)urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU    (EU Commission Directive)urn:lex:us:supreme.court:decision:1978-04-28;77-5953    (US SC decision: Riley vs Illinois)urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273    (Decision of the Belgian Council of State)

2.2.Jurisdiction-Code Registry

A new jurisdiction-code registry has been created. Note that this is a CNR registry andnot an IANA registry.¶

Each entry contains the following elements:¶

jurisdiction-code:

The identifier assigned to the jurisdiction(i.e., to the country or organization).¶

jurisdiction:

The official name of the jurisdiction (i.e., the country or organization).¶

registrant:

Essential information that identifies the organizationthat requested the registration of the code. The registrant willbe responsible for its DNS zone, the attribution of sub-zonedelegations, and so on. It isRECOMMENDED that each jurisdictioncreate a registry of all delegated levels so that the organizationresponsible for each sub-zone can easily be identified.¶

reference:

A reference to the defining document (if any).¶

The table, available at the address lex-urn.nic.it, is initially empty. The registry is initially empty. The following are possible example entries:¶

"br"; "Brazil"; "Prodasen, Federal Senate, address, contact";      \[reference\]"eu"; "European Union"; "DG Digit, European Commission, address,      contact"; \[reference\]"un.org"; "United Nations"; "DPI, United Nations, address,          contact"; \[reference\]

CNR is responsible for thejurisdiction-code and the root lex-nameserver.nic.it registries of the resolutionrouting.¶

A new Jurisdictional Registrar will contact CNR or the designatedexpert(s) according to the established rules of governance (publishedon the CNR website dedicated to LEX governance). The applicationwill be evaluated according to the Jurisdictional Registrarauthoritativeness and the offered guarantees. The designatedexpert(s) will evaluate such applications with a similar approach asevaluations of the DNS. Typically, such applications should come from publicadministrations, as authorities enacting sources of law.¶

The adopted registration policy is similar to that of the "Expert Review"policy specified in[RFC8126]. The designated expert(s) will assignjurisdiction-codes based on the following principles:¶

• If a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to acountry and the jurisdiction-code is the same as a top-level Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD),then the top-level ccTLD should beused as the jurisdiction-code.¶

• If a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to a multi-national organization (e.g., European Union) or international organization (e.g., United Nations and World Trade Organization), the Top-Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., "un.org" and "wto.org") of the organization should be used as the jurisdiction-code.¶

• If a multi-national or international organization doesnot have a registered domain, the designated expert(s) should assignsomething like "name.lex.arpa", where the name will be the acronym of the organization name in the language chosen by the organization itself.For example, the jurisdiction-code of the European Economic Communitycould be "eec.lex.arpa". The alias mechanism allows for acronyms in different languages.¶

Jurisdiction-codesMUST NOT be renamed, because thatwould violate the rule that URN assignments be persistent.¶

Jurisdiction-codesMUST NOT ever be deleted. They can only be marked as"obsolete", i.e., closed for new assignments within the jurisdiction.Requests to obsolete a jurisdiction-code are also processed bythe designated expert(s).¶

Designated expert(s) can unilaterally initiate allocation orobsolescence of a jurisdiction-code.¶

Requests for new jurisdiction-code assignments must includethe organization or country requesting it and contact information (email)of who requested the assignment.¶

2.3.Conformance with URN Syntax

The LEX namespace identifier (NID) syntax conforms to[RFC8141]. However, a series of characters are reserved for identifyingelements or sub-elements, or for future extensions of the LEX namingconvention (seeSection 3.2).¶

2.4.Validation Mechanism

The Jurisdictional Registrar (or those it delegates) of each adheringcountry or organization is responsible for the definition oracceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authorityand type of legal measure).¶

2.5.Scope

The scope is global. In fact, each Body that enacts sources of law can identify them by this scheme. Furthermore, other bodies (even non-enacting sources of law, such as newspapers, magazine publishers, etc.) that aim to reference legal documents can unequivocally identify them by this scheme.¶

3.1.Allowed and Not Allowed Characters

The characters are defined in accordance with[RFC8141]. For various reasons that are explained later, only a subset of characters isallowed in the LEX NSS. All other characters are either eliminated or converted.¶

For the full syntax of the uniform names in the LEX space, pleaseseeSection 8.¶

3.2.Reserved Characters

The following characters are reserved in the specific LEXnamespace:¶

"@"

Separator of the expression that contains information on version and language.¶

"$"

Separator of the manifestation that contains information on format, editor, etc.¶

":"

Separator of the main elements of the name at any entity.¶

";"

Separator of the level. It identifies the introduction of an element at a hierarchically lower level or the introduction of a specification.¶

"+"

Separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g., multiple authorities).¶

"|"

Separator between different formats of the same element (e.g., date).¶

","

Separator of the repetitions of individual components in the main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., multiple numbers).¶

"~"

Separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g., paragraph of an article).¶

"*"

Reserved for future expansions.¶

"!"

Reserved for future expansions.¶

To keep backward compatibility with existing applications in somejurisdictions, the LEX NID syntax does not include the use of thecharacter "/" in this version. This character is always converted into"-", except in the formal annexes (seeSection 6.4.1).¶

3.3.Case Sensitivity

For all the languages where different cases (uppercase or lowercase) or different spellings of the same word are possible, names belonging to LEX namespace are case-insensitive. For the Latin alphabet, it isRECOMMENDED that names be created in lower case, but names that differ only in case or in the spelling of the same wordMUST be considered equivalent (e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry").¶

3.4.Unicode Characters Outside the ASCII Range

In order to exploit the DNS as a routing tool towards the properresolution system, keep editing and communication more simple, and avoid character percent-encoding, it isRECOMMENDED that characters outside the ASCII range (e.g., national characters, diacritic signs, etc.) are turned into base ASCIIcharacters (e.g., the Italian term "sanità" (sanitU+00E0)" replaced into"sanita", the French term "ministère" (ministU+00E8re) replaced into"ministere", in case by transliteration (e.g., "München" (MU+00FCnchen)replaced into "muenchen").¶

This mapping consists of:¶

• Transcription from non-Latin alphabets¶

• Transliteration of some signs (e.g., diaeresis and eszett)¶

• Preservation of only the basic characters, eliminating the signsplaced above (e.g., accents and tilde), below (e.g., cedilla and little tail), or on (e.g., oblique cut)¶

The most suitable, well-known, and widespread mapping system for a givenlanguageMUST be chosen by the jurisdiction or by thejurisdiction-unit (in agreement with the jurisdiction) in the case ofdifferent languages in various regions, also taking into account the choicesmade for the same language by other jurisdictions. This mapping is simplerand more feasible for languages that use the Latin alphabet and graduallybecomes more complex for other alphabets and for writing systems that useopposite orientation (from right to left) or are based on ideographicsymbols.¶

If this conversion is not acceptable by a specific jurisdiction or it is not available in a given language, UnicodeMUST be used, and for accessing network protocols, any Unicode code points outside the ASCII rangeMUST be converted to UTF-8 percent-encoding according to[RFC3986] and[RFC3629] .¶

In this case, it should be noted that the generated URN (as well as some of its parts) cannot be used directly for routing through the DNS. Therefore, the jurisdiction must adopt one of the following strategies:¶

• Convert non-ASCII characters within the DNS into IDNencoding using Punycode translation[RFC5894] (e.g.,"münchen" (mU+00FCnchen) in xn--mnchen-3ya) and develop asoftware interface that converts the URN before the navigation in the DNS.¶

• Create a routing service relying on a software, outside of the DNS,that addresses a proper resolution service.¶

Note that the LEX URN ID could contain groups of characters (UTF-8 percent-encoded) of some languages with different orientations. In this case, the BiDi rules apply[RFC5893].¶

The preferred order is summarized as follows:¶

• Conversion into basic ASCII is theRECOMMENDED solution (because conversions for network protocols and the DNS are not needed).¶

• Using Unicode and converting to UTF-8 percent-encoding[RFC3629] for accessing network protocols and to Punycode[RFC5894] only for navigation in DNS via software interface.¶

• Creation of a routing service relying on a software outside of DNSand addressing a proper resolution service.¶

The first solution allows native DNS routing while the other twosolutions require software development for the interface or the routing.However, it is up to the specific jurisdiction to choose the preferredsolution.¶

The following are two examples (Latin and Cyrillic alphabets) relating to the differentsolutions adopted:¶

• A circular adopted by the Municipality of Munich (Rundschreiben derStadt "München" (MU+00FCnchen)):¶

  - ASCII: urn:lex:de:stadt.munchen:rundschreiben:...;- Unicode: urn:lex:de:stadt.mU+00FCnchen:rundschreiben:...;- UTF-8: urn:lex:de:stadt.m%C3%BCnchen:rundschreiben:...;- PUNYCODE: urn:lex:de:stadt.xn--mnchen-3ya:rundschreiben:...

  ¶

• A state law of the Russian Federation (Latin: gosudarstvo zakon;Cyrillic: "состояние закон" (U+0441U+043EU+0441U+0442U+043EU+044FU+043DU+0438U+0435U+0437U+0430U+043AU+043EU+043D)), assuming that the Russia jurisdiction-code is expressed in ASCII ("ru")(while the Cyrillic version would be "рф" (U+0440U+0444)):¶

  - ASCII: urn:lex:ru:gosudarstvo:zakon:...- Unicode: urn:lex:ru:U+0441U+043EU+0441U+0442U+043EU+044FU+043D           U+0438U+0435:U+0437U+0430U+043AU+043EU+043D:...- UTF-8: urn:lex:ru:%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1         %8F%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5:%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA         %D0%BE%D0%BD:...- PUNYCODE: urn:lex:ru:xn--80aebe3cdmfdkg:xn--80ankme:...

  ¶

3.5.Abbreviations

Abbreviations are often used in law for indicating institutions (e.g.,Min.), structures (e.g., Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., Reg.), but they are notused in a uniform way. Therefore, their expansion is highlyRECOMMENDED(e.g., "Min." is expanded as "ministry").¶

3.6.Date Format

[ISO.8601-1.2019] and[ISO.8601-2.2019] describe the international format for representing dates. DatesMUST always be represented in this format (4 digits for the year, 2 digits for the month, and 2 digits for the day):¶

    date-iso = year "-" month "-" day

For example, "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02".¶

This format ensures interoperability between different representation systems and there are several programs for mapping other formats to this one. However, to make reading and understanding such other formats (e.g., Jewish calendar), the LEX URN scheme provides that the date can be added in the jurisdiction's own format. The date in the previous example (1999-09-02) would be as follows:¶

• in Hebrew characters (21 Elul 5759):¶

  כ״א-בֶּאֱלוּל-תשנ״ט

  ¶

  Note that the example above uses right-to-left (RTL) script, which in the context of this specification may be displayed differently by different document presentation environments. The descriptive text may be more reliable to follow than the necessarily device- and application-specific rendering.¶

• in U+ notation:¶

  U+05D8U+05F4U+05E0U+05E9U+05EAU+002DU+05DCU+05D5U+05BCU+05DCU+05D0U+05B1U+05D1U+05B6U+05BCU+002DU+05D0U+05F4U+05DB

  ¶

• in UTF-8 code:¶

  %d7%98%d7%b4%d7%a0%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%95%d6%bc%d7%9c%d7%90%d6%b1%d7%91%d6%b6%d6%bc-%d7%90%d7%b4%d7%9b

  ¶

Therefore, for all the dates in the LEX URN identifier (see Sections6.3 and7.1.2),it is possible to indicate the date in the local format:¶

    date = date-iso ["|" date-loc]

For example, 1999-09-02 will be written in
ISO plus Hebrew format as:1999-09-02|כ״א-בֶּאֱלוּל-תשנ״טwhich is to be converted into UTF-8 for network protocols and for resolution (seeSection 3.4). The characters that are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., ",") cannot exist inside the date-loc and thereforeMUST be turned into ".". To be aligned with ISO format, any blank between day, month, and yearMUST be converted into "-".¶

In the above Hebrew character examples, the sequence of characters
is"כ" (HEBREW LETTER KAF, U+05DB),"״" (HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERSHAYIM, U+05F4),"א" (HEBREW LETTER ALEF, U+05D0),"-" (HYPHEN-MINUS, U+002D),"בֶּ" (HEBREW LETTER BET, HEBREW POINT SEGOL, HEBREW POINT DAGESH OR MAPIQ, U+05D1 U+05B6 U+05BC),"אֱ" (HEBREW LETTER ALEF, HEBREW POINT HATAF SEGOL, U+05D0 U+05B1),"ל" (HEBREW LETTER LAMED, U+05DC),"וּ" (HEBREW LETTER VAV, HEBREW POINT DAGESH OR MAPIQ, U+05D5 U+05BC),"ל" (HEBREW LETTER LAMED, U+05DC),"-" (HYPHEN-MINUS, U+002D),"ת" (HEBREW LETTER TAV, U+05EA),"ש" (HEBREW LETTER SHIN, U+05E9),"נ" (HEBREW LETTER NUN, U+05E0),"״" (HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERSHAYIM, U+05F4), and"ט" (HEBREW LETTER TET, U+05D8).¶

4.1.Spaces, Connectives, and Punctuation Marks

When explicitly present, all language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), punctuation marks, and special characters (e.g., apostrophes, dashes, etc.) are eliminated (no transformation occurs in cases of languages with declensions or agglutinating languages). The words that are left are connected to each other by a dot ("."), which substitutes for the space (e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget, and Economic Planning" becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning" and "Ministerstvo Finansov" becomes "ministerstvo.finansov").¶

4.2.Acronyms

The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity inuniform names (the same acronym may indicate two differentinstitutions or structures); therefore, their expansion is highlyRECOMMENDED(e.g., "FAO" is expanded as "food.agriculture.organization").¶

4.3.Ordinal Numbers

To standardise the representation, it is highlyRECOMMENDED that any ordinalnumber included in a component of a document name (e.g., in thedescription of an institution Body) is indicated in Western Arabicnumerals, regardless to the original expression, whether Romannumerals, an adjective, Arabic numerals with an apex, etc.(such as IV, third, 1° (1U+00B0), and 2^). For example, "Department IV" becomes "department.4".¶

5.1.Basic Principles

The uniform name must identify one and only one document (moreprecisely a "bibliographic resource"[ISBD]; see alsoSection 5.2)and is created in such a way that it is:¶

• self-explanatory,¶

• identifiable through simple and clear rules,¶

• compatible with the practice commonly used for references,¶

• able to be created from references in the text, automatically (byparser) or manually, and¶

• representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects ofthe document.¶

5.2.Model of Sources of Law Representation

According to the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)[FRBR] model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), four fundamental entities (or aspects) can be specified in a source of law, as in any intellectual production.¶

The first two entities reflect its contents:¶

work:

Identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in this document, itidentifies a source of law in both its original form and its amended form over time.¶

expression:

Identifies a specific intellectual realization of awork; in this document, it identifies every different (original orup-to-date) version of the source of law over time and/or language inwhich the text is expressed.¶

The other two entities relate to its form:¶

manifestation:

Identifies a physical embodiment of an expression of a work;in this document, it identifies embodiments in different media(printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.),or other publishing characteristics.¶

item:

Identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in this document, itidentifies individual physical copies as they are found inparticular physical locations.¶

In this document, the[FRBR] model has been interpreted for thespecific characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, apartfrom the language that does produce a specific expression, thediscriminative criterion between expression and manifestation isbased on the difference of the juridical effects that a variation canprovide with respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties,and institutions). In this scenario, the main characteristic of theexpression of an act is represented by its validity over the timeduring which it provides the same juridical effects. These effects maychange as a result of amendments or annulments of other legislative orjurisprudential acts. Therefore, notes, summaries, comments,anonymizations, and other editorial activities over the same text donot produce different expressions. Instead, they produce different manifestations.¶

5.3.Structure of the Local-Name

The local-name within the LEX namespaceMUST contain all thenecessary pieces of information enabling the unequivocalidentification of a legal document. If the local-name violatesthis requirement, the related URN is not a valid one within the LEXnamespace.¶

In the legal domain, three components are alwayspresent at the "work" level: the enacting authority, the measure type, and thedetails. A fourth component, the annex, is added if any.It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is:¶

• the original version and all the amended versions of the samedocument, and¶

• the versions of the text expressed in the different officiallanguages of the state or organization.¶

Finally, the uniform name allows a distinction among diversemanifestations that may be produced by multiple publishers usingdifferent means and formats.¶

In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work)remains the same, but information is added regarding the specificversion under consideration (expression). Similarly, a suffix is addedto the expression for representing the characteristics of thepublication (manifestation).¶

Information that forms a uniform name for a source of law at each level(work, expression, and manifestation) is expressed in the officiallanguage of the relevant jurisdiction. More language-dependent names (aliases) are created in cases where there are multiple official languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in international treaties).¶

Therefore, the more general structure of the local-name appears asfollows:¶

       local-name = work ["@" expression] ["$" manifestation]

However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name ofthe main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of anentire class of documents that includes the following: the original main document,the annexes, and all the versions, languages, and formatsthat are subsequently generated.¶

5.4.Structure of the Document Identifier at "Work" Level

The structure of the document identifier is comprised of the fourfundamental elements mentioned above, distinguished one fromthe other and ordered by increasingly narrowdomains and competencies:¶

   work = authority ":" measure ":" details *(":" annex)

where:¶

authority:

The issuing or proposing authority of the measure(e.g., state, ministry, municipality, court, etc.).¶

measure:

The type of the measure, both public (e.g.,constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) andprivate (e.g., license, agreement, etc.).¶

details:

The terms associated with the measure, typically the date(usually the signature date) and the number included in the headingof the act.¶

annex:

The identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1).¶

Both the main document and its annexes have theirown uniform names so that they can be referenced individually; theidentifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. In a similar way, the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending to that of the annex that it is attached to.¶

The main elements of the work name are generally divided into severalelementary components, and for each component, specific rules ofrepresentation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax, andorder).For the details regarding each element, seeSection 6.The following are hypothetical examples of work identifiers:¶

urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1urn:lex:un.org:united.nations;general.assembly:resolution:    1961-11-28;a-res-1661urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581

The type of measure is important to identifycase law and legislation, especially within legal systemswhere cases are traditionally identified only through the year ofrelease and a number. Since the aim of the LEX schema is toidentify specific materials, the type of measure or the full date areable to differentiate between materials belonging to aspecific case.¶

The following is an example where the type of measure or the full dateare essential for identify specific materials of a case:¶

• 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann AG and others / ECSC High Authority¶

    urn:lex:eec.lex.arpa:court.justice:judgement:1960-04-04;4-59

  ¶

• 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG and others / ECSC High Authority¶

    urn:lex:eec.lex.arpa:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59

  ¶

5.5.Aliases

International treaties involve multiple signatory jurisdictionsand are therefore represented through multiple identifiers, each of them relatedto a signatory. For example, a bilateral France andGermany treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging toeither the "fr" or "de" jurisdiction(e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and "urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:..."since it pertains to both the French and German jurisdictions).¶

In the states or organizations that have multiple officiallanguages, a document has multiple identifiers. Each identifier is expressed ina different official language and is basically a set of equivalent aliases.This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniformname of the referred source of law in the same language used in thedocument itself(e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31" and"urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31").¶

Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name inorder to facilitate its linking from other documents. This option canbe used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referencedfrom different perspectives, for example, the form of a document'spromulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated through a Decree of the President of the Republic).¶

5.6.Structure of the Document Identifier at "Expression" Level

There may be several expressions of a legal text connected tospecific versions or languages.¶

Each version is characterized by the period of time during which thattext is to be considered to be in force or effective.The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequentversion. New versions of a text may be brought into existence by:¶

• amendments due to the issuing of other legalacts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidatedtexts,¶

• correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige), and¶

• entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending onthe specific date in which different partitions of a text come intoforce.¶

Each version may be expressed in more than one language,with each language version having its own specific identifier.The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information tothe work identifier using the following main structure:¶

    expression = version [":" language]

where:¶

version:

The identifier of the version of the original oramended source of law. In general, it is expressed by thepromulgation date of the amending act; other specificinformation can be used for particular documents. If necessary, theoriginal version is specified by the string "original" and is expressed inthe language of the act or version (for the details regarding thiselement, please seeSection 7).¶

language:

The identification code of the language in which thedocument is expressed, according to[RFC5646] (it=Italian, fr=French,de=German, etc.). The granularity level of the language (for example,the specification of the German language as used in Switzerlandrather than standard German) is left to each specificjurisdiction. The information is not necessary when the text isexpressed in the sole official language of the country orjurisdiction.¶

The following are hypothetical examples of document identifiers for expressions:¶

urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr    (original version in French)urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de    (original version in German)urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr    (amended version in French)urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de    (amended version in German)urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr    (original version in French of a Belgian decision)

5.7.Structure of the Document Identifier at "Manifestation" Level

To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of theexpression is followed by a suitable suffix containing the followingmain elements:¶

editor:

Editorial staff who produced it, expressed according tothe publisher's Internet domain name. Since publishers' domain names may varyover time, manifestations already assigned by a publisher remainunchanged, even if the identified object is no longer accessible. Inthis case, in order to make its materials accessible, the publisherwill have to create a new manifestation with anew domain name for each object.¶

format:

The digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressedaccording to the MIME Content-Type standard[RFC2045], where the"/" character is to be substituted with the "-" sign.¶

component:

Possible components of the expressions contained in the manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-dependent labels representing the whole document (in English "all"), the main part of the document (in English "body"), or the caption label of the component itself (e.g., Table 1, Figure 2, etc.).¶

feature:

Other features of the document (e.g., anonymizeddecision text).¶

Thus, the manifestation suffix reads:¶

    manifestation = editor ":" format                    [":" component [":" feature]]

To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element ofthe manifestationMAY be followed by further specifications(separated by ";"), for example, the archive name and electronic publisherfor the editor and the version for format.Therefore, the main elements of the manifestation will assume thefollowing forms:¶

    editor = publisher *(";" specification)    format = mime *(";" specification)    component = part *(";" specification)    feature = attribute *(";" specification)

The syntax details of the manifestation element are shown inSection 8 in the related part.¶

The following are hypothetical examples:¶

• The original version of the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might havethe following manifestations with their relative uniform names:¶

  • PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian Parliament:¶

    urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$parlamento.it:application-pdf;1.7

    ¶

  • XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF format(version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the body, edited bythe Italian Senate:¶

    urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$senato.it:text-xml;  dtd-nir-2.2:testourn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$senato.it:  application-pdf;1.7:figura.1

    ¶

• The Spanish URN of the HTML format of the whole Judgment of theEuropean Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version,published in the Jurifast database in anonymized form:¶

  urn:lex:eu:tribunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33-08@original:es$juradmin.eu;jurifast:text-html:todo:anonimo

  ¶

It is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to amanifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects areinvolved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual intheir own right (e.g., geographic maps, photographs, etc.) or textsrecorded in non-textual formats (e.g., image scans of documents).¶

5.8.Sources of Law References

References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions ofthe act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document.¶

From a legal point of view, a partition is always a text block thatrepresents a logical subdivision of an act.¶

In the digital representation, a partition is represented by an element (a block of text) with its own ID; this ID aims to identify the related element and locate it. Therefore, it is possible to either extract or point to a partition.¶

For markup that does not fit the logical structure of the text (like HTML),generally only the starting point of the partition, rather than thewhole block of text or element, is identified through a label (e.g., <aid=partitionID></a> tag in the HTML markup language[W3C.HTML]). In this case, it is only possible to point to a partition but not extract it.¶

Partitions should be assigned unique labels orIDs within the including document, and their value should be the sameregardless of document format.¶

To enable the construction of the partition identifier between different collections of documents, specific construction rules for IDs or labels will be defined and shared within each country or jurisdiction for any document type. For example, in legislation, paragraph 2 of article 3 might have the value "art3;par2" as the label or ID; similarly, for case law, paragraph 22 of the judgment in Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands might have the value "par22" as the label or ID.¶

Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility withapplications that are able to manage this information (e.g., returning theproper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the caseof rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc.For this purpose, it is necessary that the partition identifier betransmitted to the servers (resolution and application). Therefore,it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment,which is not transmitted to the server.¶

According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is:¶

     URN-reference = URN-document ["~" partition-id]

For example, referring to paragraph 3 of article 15 of the FrenchAct of 15 May 2004, n. 106, the reference can be"urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3".¶

If a different separator ("~") is used after the document name, the partition ID is not withheld by the browser but is transmitted to the resolution process. If thepartition syntax is compatible with the media type used, this enables the resolver to retrieve (forexample, out of a database) only the referred partition; otherwise, the whole act is returned.¶

When resolving to HTTP,the resolverSHALL transform the partition ID to an appropriate internal reference (#) on the page or at the beginning if that point cannot be found.The transformation in the URI fragment is obtained by appending the "#" character followed by the partition ID tothe URL (in theexample above, the returned URL will be <URL-document>#art15;par3).Doing this, knowing the granularity of the act markup, the resolvercould exploit the hierarchical structure of the ID by eliminating sub-partitions that are not addressed. In the previous example, if only the article was identified in theact, it could return <URL-document>#art15only.¶

It is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in thiscase, only the URN document component of the reference is transmittedto the resolver; therefore, the whole document will always be retrieved.¶

6.1.The Authority Element

   authority = issuer *("+" issuer)

   issuer = (institution *(";" body-function)) / office

6.2.The Measure Element

      measure = measure-type *(";" specification)

6.3.The Details Element

   details = (dates / period) ";" numbers

   dates = date *("," date)

  personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-  13;1-p-2000

   number-lex = "lex-" 1*DIGIT

  number = document-id *("," document-id)

6.4.The Annex Element

    annex = annex-id *(";" specification)

  region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;  borders.park

  region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;  borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories

7.1.The Version Element

   version = (amendment-date / specification)             *(";" (event-date / event))

9.1.Specifying the Jurisdiction Element of the LEX Identifier

Under the LEX namespace, each country or international organizationis assigned a jurisdiction-code, which characterizes the URNs ofthe source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code isassigned according to ccTLD (as well as TLDN (Top-Level Domain Name)or DN (Domain Name) for organizations) representation, and it isthe value of the jurisdiction-code element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness of the identifiers.¶

9.2.Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment

Any country or jurisdiction that intends to adopt this schemaMUSTidentify a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization that shares anddefines the structure of the optional part (jurisdiction-unit) ofthe name, according to the organization of the state or institution(for details, seeSection 2.2). It must appoint a Jurisdictional Registrar and must apply the Designated Experts to register the new jurisdiction-code.¶

For example, in a federal state,a jurisdiction-unit corresponding to the name of each Member State(e.g., "br;sao.paulo", "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined.¶

The process of assigning the local-name is managed by eachspecific country or jurisdiction under the related jurisdictionelement.¶

In any country, the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines theassignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type oflegal measure) of the local-names considering the characteristics ofits own state or institution organization.¶

The Jurisdictional RegistrarMUST establish, according to the guidelinesindicated in this document, a uniform procedure within thecountry or organization to define local-name elements, makedecisions about normalizations, solve and avoid possiblename collisions, and maintain authoritative registries ofvarious kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). Inparticular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structureand naming of government entities are important to semantically awareapplications in this domain.¶

Moreover, the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the rules to constructpartition IDs for each document type, possibly in accordance withthose already defined in other jurisdictions.¶

Finally, the Jurisdictional Registrar will develop and publish the rules and guidelines for the local-name construction as well as the predefined values and codes. The Jurisdictional Registrar should also promote the LEX URN identifier for the sources of law of its jurisdiction.¶

Such a set of rules will have to be followed by all institutionalbodies adopting the LEX URN identification system in a country orjurisdiction, as well as by private publishers. Each of them willbe responsible for assigning names to their domains.¶

9.3.Identifier Uniqueness

Identifiers in the LEX namespace are defined through ajurisdiction element assigned to the sources of law of a specificcountry or organization, and a local-name is assigned by the issuingauthority in conformance with the syntax defined inSection 5. Themain elements (authority and type of measure) of the local-name aredefined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it is ensured thatthe constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional RegistrarMUSTprovide clear documentation of rules by which names are to beconstructed andMUST update its registries and make them accessible.¶

Any enacting authority is responsible for defining formal parameters toguarantee local-name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, aconventional internal number, which when combined with the other local-name components (authority, measure, and date), builds a uniqueidentifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogueof previously assigned names.¶

9.4.Identifier Persistence Considerations

The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of theinstitutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the LEXschema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resourcesidentified by the assigned URNs.¶

In particular, CNR is responsible for maintainingthe uniqueness of the jurisdiction element. Given that thejurisdiction is assigned on the basis of the long-held ccTLDrepresentation of the country (or the TLDN or DN of the organization)and that the associated code for country or organization is expected tocontinue indefinitely, the URN also persists indefinitely.¶

The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegatethe responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities thatis identified within each country or organization.¶

Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs thathave a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain uniquefor the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations,as well as diverse local forms of government organization, willresult in different methods of assigning responsibility for differentlevels of the name.¶

Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of anauthoritative hierarchy, it is highly desirable that it be done bycreating consensus around a series of published rules for thecreation and administration of names by institutions and bodies thatoperate by means of collaboration rather than compulsion.¶

Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, rangingfrom national scope down to very local scope,MUST equally takeresponsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their scope.¶

10.1.General Architecture of the System

The task of the resolution service is to associate a LEXidentifier with a specific document address on the Internet. Incontrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous andenforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the LEX namespaceresolver will be expected to cope with a wide variety of inputsthat are incomplete or partially incorrect, particularly those created by the automated extraction ofreferences from texts. In this document,the result is a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolverdesign.¶

The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamentalcomponents: a chain of information in the DNS and aseries of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competentwithin a specific domain of the namespace.¶

The client retrieves the document associated with this URN using theprocedure described in[RFC3404], which starts with a DNS NAPTRquery.¶

A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management ofhierarchically dependent portions of the name.Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheldprovided that the processes for their resolution and management arerobust and followed.¶

For the LEX namespace, CNR will 1) maintain the root zone of thechain resolution, equivalent to "lex.urn.arpa" (see[RFC3405]), inthe lex-nameserver.nic.it (seeSection 12) and 2) update the DNSinformation with a new record to delegate the relative resolutionwhen a new country (e.g., "br") or organization is added(seeSection 2.2). This delegation may be obtained by a regularexpression that matches the initial part of the URN (e.g.,"urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g.,"lex.senado.gov.br").¶

Likewise, the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniformnames (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative rootin the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing theresolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniformnames. In a similar way, it can delegate the resolution ofcountry/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo")towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br").¶

Such a DNS routing chain does not work for all the URN componentscontaining percent-encoded characters. Therefore, when converting a LEX URNin UTF-8 code to a DNS query, clientsMUST perform any necessary punycodeconversion[RFC5891] before sending the query.¶

The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base(consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and software to query the knowledge base.¶

10.2.Catalogues for Resolution

Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations;thus, incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred documentare likely to be built from textual references (this is evenmore frequent if they are created automatically through a specificparser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based ona relational database, is suggested, as it will lead to higherflexibility in the resolution process.¶

In addition, the catalogue must manage the aliases, the variousversions and languages of the same source of law, and therelated manifestations.¶

It is suggested that each enacting authority implement its owncatalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to eachresource.¶

10.3.Suggested Resolver Behavior

First, the resolverSHOULD separate the part corresponding tothe partition ID from the document name, with the "~" separator.¶

The resolution processSHOULD implement a normalization of theuniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming somecomponents to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms,expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names,standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function,authorities and types of measure registries are useful.¶

The resolverSHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URNthat corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary).Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate orincomplete, an iterative and heuristic approach (based on partialmatches) is indicated. Incompletereferences (not including all the elements to create the canonicaluniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, thereference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of thereference in the document in which it occurs.¶

In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID informationto retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition;otherwise, the entire document is returned.¶

Lacking more specific indications, the resolverSHOULD select thebest (most recent) version of the requested source of law andprovide all the manifestations with their related items.A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will,of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on anysuggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g., date,language, format, etc.).¶

Finally, the resolverSHOULD append the "#" characterfollowed by the partition ID to URLs, to create URI fragments forbrowser pointing.¶