The Law and Ontology Seminar (PHI 531, Fall 1997) explores the implications of the use of ontological methods in the study of law and legal entities.
LEGAL ENTITIES
The importance of legal entities in our everyday lives cannot be overlooked. Rights, property, obligations, crimes, contracts, patents, debts, insurance policies, parcels of real estate, nation-states, and similar objects define the scope of accepted behavior in all societies ruled by laws.
The discipline of ontology involves the description of the structure of the different types of entities by which the different regions of reality are constituted, as well as the description of the relations among these entities. Ontology has been successfully applied in the medical and other fields. [See A. U. Frank, "Ontology: A Consumer's Point of View," in: Spatial and Temporal Reasoning, O. Stock (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers] But applied ontologists have not yet turned their attentions to the domain of law, and the consequent lack of insight into the ontology of legal entities can be seen to have led, in some cases, to contradictions and to economic inefficiencies in the development of law.
A sophisticated study of legal entities, developed through the practice of
applied ontology, can help avoid at least some of these pitfalls, pitfalls
which naturally arise when 'naive' ontology guides law-making. Naive ontology
is simply the categorization of objects without benefit of the tools of formal
ontology and without due consideration for the future implications of
technological innovations. A formal ontology of law will account for every
object with which the law is concerned, from bagels to battleships, all of
which at some point come to be the subjects of legislation.
NEW APPROACHES TO LAW-MAKING
Applied legal ontology is occupied with the examination and formulation of
ontologies designed to be of service in the articulation, codification,
revision and application of laws. The objects of our study in this course will
be both legal entities (such as contracts and rights) and other objects which
are the subjects of law-making (such as CD-ROMs, biotopes, broadcast
frequencies, nuclear weapons or genetically engineered mice). We believe that
new legislation, when guided by sound analysis, can at least to some degree
alleviate the problems associated with the rapid introduction of new
technologies and other forms of social change.
REFERENCES AVAILABLE ON THE WEB:
Smith, Barry, "The Cognitive Geometry of War," Peter Koller and Klaus Puhl (eds.), Problems of Contemporary Political Philosophy, Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1997.
Smith, Barry, "Social Objects," paper presented to the conference on Austrian Philosophy in Cerisy-la-Salle, September 1997.
Smith, Barry, "On Substances, Accidents and Universals: In Defence of a Constituent Ontology," Philosophical Papers, 27 (1997).
Smith, Barry and Zaibert, Leonardo, "Law, Ecology, Land and Credit: An Investigation in the Comparative Ontology of Real Estate and Landed Property," 1996 manuscript.
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