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

比较法中的概念整合：宪法、协商和法院分析的联系

• 批准号: 2315189
• 负责人: Zachary Elkins
• 金额: $ 44.99万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2315189&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Concept; Integration; Comparative; Law; Linking

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.

宪法起草者和研究者长期以来一直在探索宪法思想的起源和后果，以了解宪法为什么成功和失败，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，如果没有一个协调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一直是一个核心问题，甚至导致了对类别和术语的高度共识。在其他领域，如法律和政治学，概念较少受到管制。该项目使用数字化工具，以加快一个更系统的方法来表示比较法的想法。其目标是通过组织和丰富宪法起草者和分析者可获得的历史和跨国信息，改进宪法设计。该项目将提供一系列研究成果，包括：（1）全球宪法主题的全面清单，其中整合和“映射”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，以及（3）对世界各地法院裁决中嵌入的宪法思想进行系统分析，揭示了哪些宪法思想获得牵引力，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，政治学和信息技术的国际研究社区积极传播。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。该项目利用这些工具：（1）完善比较宪法项目（CCP）本体，以与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范围，（2）使用新的CCP本体提供全球国家宪法的章节级主题覆盖范围，（3）将宪法内容与公众咨询输入联系起来，以评估宪法的普遍性，演变，（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普遍性、演变和延伸。该项目在方法上的贡献在于开发多语种概念处理工具，比较和整合比较法中的概念和本体。其本体论的贡献在于开发了一个可复制的过程，用于优化语义相似性应用中的本体论性能，改进和扩展CCP本体论，并创建了比较法本体论的公共知识库。它的实质性贡献确定了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，并在法院提起诉讼。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。