๐ค AI Summary
This work proposes a framework to achieve interoperability between Japanese domestic legal data and international legal standards such as Akoma Ntoso, enabling semantic comparison of legal provisions across jurisdictions. We develop the first structural transformation pipeline from Japanโs Legal Standard XML (JLS) to LegalDocML (Akoma Ntoso) and integrate multilingual embeddings, FAISS-based vector retrieval, and Cross-Encoder re-ranking to enable high-precision cross-lingual alignment of legal articles. The resulting prototype system automatically generates correspondences between provisions in Japanese and European legal systems and supports comparative legal research through an interactive visualization of legal networks. This effort marks the first integration of Japanโs legal framework into the global ecosystem of semantic legal interoperability.
๐ Abstract
This paper presents an integrated framework for computational comparative law by connecting two consecutive research projects based on the Japanese Legal Standard (JLS) XML schema. The first project establishes structural interoperability by developing a conversion pipeline from JLS to the Akoma Ntoso (AKN) standard, enabling Japanese statutes to be integrated into international LegalDocML-based legislative databases. Building on this foundation, the second project applies multilingual embedding models and semantic textual similarity techniques to identify corresponding provisions across national legal systems. A prototype system combining multilingual embeddings, FAISS retrieval, and Cross-Encoder reranking generates candidate correspondences and visualizes them as cross-jurisdictional networks for exploratory comparative analysis.