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理念的起源和后果--以了解为什么宪法成功和失败，宪法理念何时获得牵引力，以及它们如何塑造人们的生活。然而，如果没有一种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。在一些领域，系统化和组织概念一直是一个核心问题，甚至导致就类别和术语达成高度共识。在其他领域，如法律和政治学，概念受到的监管较少。该项目使用数字工具加速采用更系统的方法在比较法中表达观点。其目标是通过组织和丰富宪法起草者和分析人士可获得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产品，包括(1)世界各地宪法专题的全面清单，其中纳入并“绘制”了该领域研究项目中引用的相关概念；(2)在宪法咨询期间发现和追踪公众评论中嵌入的想法的新方法；以及(3)对世界各地法院裁决中嵌入的宪法想法的系统分析，揭示哪些宪法想法获得支持，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、政治和信息技术领域的国际研究界积极传播。该项目使用新的和不断发展的自然语言处理(NLP)工具和该小组在宪法方面的领域知识，以促进比较法中概念的系统比较、整合和应用。该项目利用这些工具：(1)提炼比较宪法项目(CCP)本体，以便与NLP工具一起使用，并整合比较法的多种概念框架，以提供更广泛的专题覆盖；(2)使用新的比较宪法项目本体，提供全球范围内关于国家宪法的章节级别的专题报道；(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观念的普遍性、演变和接受程度；以及(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观念的普遍性、演变和延伸。该项目的方法论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论。它的本体论贡献在于开发了一个可复制的过程来优化本体在语义相似应用中的性能，提炼和扩展了CCP本体，并创建了比较法中的公共本体库。它的实质性贡献确定了宪法理念中根深蒂固的地理和时间模式，由公民提出，并在法庭上提起诉讼。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.