Entity Graph Extraction from Legal Acts -- a Prototype for a Use Case in Policy Design Analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a prototype system that automates legal document analysis using hypergraphs and Institutional Grammar to facilitate policy design studies, demonstrated on UNESCO cultural heritage legislation.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach combining legal document automation, annotation with Institutional Grammar, and hypergraph analysis for policy-related legal texts.

Findings

Successfully applied to UNESCO Convention document

Automated extraction of entities and relations in legal texts

Enhanced analysis of policy inter-relations

Abstract

This paper presents research on a prototype developed to serve the quantitative study of public policy design. This sub-discipline of political science focuses on identifying actors, relations between them, and tools at their disposal in health, environmental, economic, and other policies. Our system aims to automate the process of gathering legal documents, annotating them with Institutional Grammar, and using hypergraphs to analyse inter-relations between crucial entities. Our system is tested against the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage from 2003, a legal document regulating essential aspects of international relations securing cultural heritage.