Ontologies on trial: the lesson of Maurice v. Judd (New York, 1818)

• Published in: Information & communications technology law Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 191 - 211
• Main Author: Nissan, Ephraim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01-01-2013; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: 19th century; Cetacea; Computer science; Court cases; Court decisions; Fish oils; Information systems; Law; Ontologies; Ontology; Software; Studies; Canada; USA, New York
• ISSN: 1360-0834; 1469-8404
• DOI: 10.1080/13600834.2013.819698

Ontologies, and legal ontologies are a particular class of application of these, have become fairly popular. Are they fit for purpose? Like with all kinds of tools from legal computing, one must be cautious, and consider very attentively what the likely receptions are going to be, among users. Maurice v. Judd (New York, 1818), when a jury was called to decide whether whale oil is fish oil, and decided that indeed whales are fish, is a trial that was analysed in Graham Burnett's Trying Leviathan: The nineteenth-century New York court case that put the whale on trial and challenged the order of nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University). It is a highly readable book, and it has something important to teach developers of ontologies in the legal domain. The intended public of users of any software, or of ontologies in particular, is paramount. Those intended users you are catering to with your new tool are going to make or break it, just as it happened, e.g. to sentencing information systems in Canadian provinces.