Concept Integration in Comparative Law: Linking Constitutional, Consultation, and Court Analysis

宪法起草者和研究人员长期以来一直在探索宪法思想的起源和后果——了解宪法为什么会成功和动摇，宪法思想何时获得牵引力，以及它们如何塑造人们的生活。然而，如果没有协调一致的方法来命名和概念化这些想法，就很难在不同的国家和背景下分析这些问题。在某些领域，概念的系统化和组织化一直是一个中心问题，甚至导致对类别和术语的高度协商一致。在其他领域，如法律和政治学，概念没有那么规范。这个项目使用数字工具来加速一个更系统的方法来比较法律思想的表现。其目标是通过组织和丰富宪法起草者和分析人员可用的历史和跨国信息来改进宪法设计。该项目将提供一系列研究成果，包括：(1)全球宪法主题的综合清单，它整合并“绘制”了该领域研究项目中引用的相关概念；(2)发现和追踪宪法咨询期间公众评论中嵌入的思想的新方法；(3)对世界各地法院裁决中嵌入的宪法思想进行系统分析。揭示哪些宪法思想获得了支持，以及它们在宪法通过后如何演变。这些和其他中间产品——以数据、出版物和在线界面的形式——将在法律、政治科学和信息技术的国际研究团体中积极传播。该项目使用新的和不断发展的自然语言处理（NLP）工具和团队在宪法领域的知识，以促进比较法概念的系统比较、整合和应用。本项目使用这些工具：(1)完善比较宪法项目（CCP）本体，以便与NLP工具一起使用，并整合来自比较法的多个概念框架，以提供更广泛的主题覆盖；(2)使用新的CCP本体，在全球范围内提供国家宪法的章节级主题覆盖；(3)将宪法内容与公众咨询意见联系起来，以评估公民提出的宪法思想的流行、演变和吸收。(4)将宪法内容与法院裁决联系起来，以评估各国法院裁决中提出的宪法思想的流行、演变和延伸。该项目的方法论贡献在于开发多语言概念处理工具，以比较和整合比较法中的概念和本体。它的本体论贡献在于开发了一个可复制的过程，用于优化语义相似应用中本体论的性能，精炼和扩展CCP本体论，并为比较法中的本体论创建一个公共存储库。它的实质性贡献是确定宪法中根深蒂固的宪法思想的地理和时间模式，由公民提出，并在法庭上提起诉讼。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Constitution drafters and researchers have long explored the origins and consequences of constitutional ideas—to learn why constitutions succeed and falter, when constitutional ideas gain traction, and how they can shape people’s lives. Yet it is hard to analyze these questions across different countries and contexts without a coordinated approach to naming and conceptualizing these ideas. In some fields, systematizing and organizing concepts has been a central concern, and has even led to high levels of consensus on categories and terms. In other fields, such as Law and Political Science, concepts are less regulated. This project uses digital tools to accelerate a more systematic approach to the representation of ideas in comparative law. The goal is to improve constitutional design by organizing and enriching the historical and cross-national information available to constitution drafters and analysts. The project will deliver a series of research products including (1) a comprehensive inventory of topics in constitutions worldwide, which integrates and “maps” related concepts invoked across research projects in the field, (2) new methods for discovering and tracing ideas embedded in public comments during episodes of constitutional consultation, and (3) a systematic analysis of constitutional ideas embedded in court rulings worldwide, revealing which constitutional ideas gain traction and how they evolve after the constitution’s adoption. These and other intermediate products—in the form of data, publications, and online interfaces—will be actively disseminated in international research communities in Law, Political Science, and Information Technology. The project uses new and evolving natural language processing (NLP) tools and the team’s domain knowledge in constitutional law to facilitate the systematic comparison, integration, and application of concepts in comparative law. The project employs these tools to: (1) refine the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) ontology for use with NLP tools and integrate multiple conceptual frameworks from comparative law to provide broader topic coverage, (2) use the new CCP ontology to provide section-level topic coverage of national constitutions globally, (3) link constitutional content to public consultation input to assess the prevalence, evolution, and uptake of constitutional ideas raised by citizens, and (4) link constitutional content to court rulings to assess the prevalence, evolution, and extension of constitutional ideas raised in court rulings across countries. The project’s methodological contribution lies in developing multilingual concept processing tools that compare and integrate concepts and ontologies in comparative law. Its ontological contribution lies in developing a replicable process for optimizing the performance of ontologies in semantic-similarity applications, refining and expanding the CCP ontology, and creating a public repository for ontologies in comparative law. Its substantive contributions identify geographic and temporal patterns in the constitutional ideas entrenched in constitutions, raised by citizens, and litigated in courts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.