Welcome to the Legacy MetaLex Homepage
The original MetaLex framework was launched in 2002. This website is dedicated to the version 1.3 of this framework. Work in this context has discontinued. A complete redesign of MetaLex, including good design practices from the (Italian) Norme in Rete and (pan-African) Akoma Ntoso XML standards, has been submitted as a proposal for a CEN/ISSS standard. This version is discussed at the CEN Workshop Website.
MetaLex is an open format and a generic and extensible framework for the XML and RDF encoding of the structure and contents of legal documents. It aims to be jurisdiction and language-neutral, and is based on modern publishing concepts like XSLT-based transformation pipelines and emerging Semantic Web standards like RDF and OWL.
The problems MetaLex addresses are shared by many e-Government initiatives in the world. Increasing legal convergence between governments in the European Union, and the growing importance of traffic of people, services, goods, and money over borders of jurisdictions has led to an increased interest for foreign legislation. Publication of legislation, and the development of tools for working with legislation, is however very much a jurisdiction-specific enterprise. What is needed is a jurisdiction-independent XML standard that can be used for exchange, but also as a platform for development of manipulation and search tools.