Structure and Schema of AuthoritySpoke Holdings

This tutorial will show how to create and load objects representing legal Holdings in AuthoritySpoke.

To get ready, we need to repeat some setup steps we already saw in the An Introduction to AuthoritySpoke guide. First, import the package.

>>> import authorityspoke

Again, you have the choice of using either the real API clients or mockups that supply only the testing data for these examples.

>>> USE_REAL_CASE_API = False
>>> USE_REAL_LEGISLICE_API = False

Next, we can download the judicial decisions we’re going to compare and convert the JSON responses from the API into authorityspoke.decisions.Decision objects.

>>> import os
>>> from dotenv import load_dotenv
>>> from authorityspoke import Decision, DecisionReading
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import load_decision_as_reading
>>> from authorityspoke.io import CAPClient
>>> load_dotenv()
True
>>> if USE_REAL_CASE_API:
...     CAP_API_KEY = os.getenv('CAP_API_KEY')
...     client = CAPClient(api_token=CAP_API_KEY)
...     oracle_decision = client.read_cite(
...     cite="750 F.3d 1339",
...     full_case=True)
...     lotus_decision = client.read_cite(
...     cite="49 F.3d 807",
...     full_case=True)
...     oracle = DecisionReading(oracle_decision)
...     lotus = DecisionReading(lotus_decision)
... else:
...     oracle = load_decision_as_reading("oracle_h.json")
...     lotus = load_decision_as_reading("lotus_h.json")

And we need a download Client for accessing legislative provisions.

>>> import json

>>> from authorityspoke import LegisClient
>>> from authorityspoke.io.fake_enactments import FakeClient
>>> if USE_REAL_LEGISLICE_API:
...     LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN = os.getenv("LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN")
...     legis_client = LegisClient(api_token=LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN)
... else:
...     legis_client = FakeClient.from_file("usc.json")

Loading Holdings from Existing JSON

Now we’re ready to look at the process of describing a Holding and loading that information into AuthoritySpoke. In version 0.6, although there’s not yet a web interface for loading this data, there is an interface for loading JSON files, and there’s an OpenAPI schema specification for the input data (see below).

There are several interfaces for loading Authorityspoke objects in the authorityspoke.io.loaders and authorityspoke.io.schemas_yaml modules. One way to load data is to create a YAML document that contains a list of objects, where each object represents one Holding. Then we can load the Holdings into AuthoritySpoke objects using the read_holdings_from_file() function.

>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import read_holdings_from_file

>>> oracle_holdings = read_holdings_from_file("holding_oracle.yaml", client=legis_client)
>>> lotus_holdings = read_holdings_from_file("holding_lotus.yaml", client=legis_client)

If we want to open one of the input YAML files in a text editor for comparison, they can be found in the folder example_data/holdings/.

holding_oracle.yaml contains a list of holdings. These are places where the text of the Oracle opinion endorses legal rules (or sometimes, rejects legal rules). Each Rule is described procedurally, in terms of inputs and outputs.

Each holding in the JSON input may also include an anchors field indicating where the holding can be found in the opinion. For instance, the first holding of Oracle America v. Google is derived from the following sentence from the majority opinion:

By statute, a work must be “original” to qualify for copyright protection. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a).

The anchors field doesn’t do much yet in AuthoritySpoke version 0.6, but in future versions it’ll help link each Holding to the relevant parts of the Opinion.

The Parts of a Holding as a Python Dictionary

Now let’s look at the part of holding_oracle.yaml representing that first holding. The authorityspoke.io.loaders.load_holdings() method will convert the YAML file to a Python dictionary (with a structure similar to JSON), but won’t yet load it as an AuthoritySpoke object.

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import load_holdings
>>> holdings_to_read = load_holdings("holding_oracle.yaml")
>>> pprint(holdings_to_read[0]["inputs"])
{'content': '{the Java API} was an original work',
 'truth': False,
 'type': 'fact'}

To compare the input data to the created Python objects, link the Holdings to the OpinionReading using the posit() method. As we look at the parts of the JSON file, the code cells will show how fields from the JSON affect the structure of the Holding.

>>> oracle.posit(oracle_holdings)
>>> lotus.posit(lotus_holdings)
>>> print(oracle.holdings[0])
the Holding to ACCEPT
  the Rule that the court MUST SOMETIMES impose the
    RESULT:
      the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
    GIVEN:
      the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work
    GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
      "Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)

This Holding means that according to the cited Enactment, if it’s false that “the Java API was an original work”, then it’s mandatory for the court to find it to be false that “the Java API was copyrightable”.

The JSON file represented these Factors inside an “inputs” field (labeled as the “GIVEN” Factors when you print the Holding object) and an “outputs” field (labeled as “RESULT” Factors). Inputs are the preconditions for applying the Holding, and outputs are the results. Not shown here, Rules can also have “despite” Factors, which are Factors that don’t need to be present to trigger the rule, but that don’t prevent the rule from applying if they’re present. There can be more than one Factor in the “inputs”, “outputs” or “despite” categories, and if so they would be listed together in square brackets in the JSON.

>>> print(oracle.holdings[0].inputs[0])
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work

The curly brackets around {the Java API} indicate that the parser should consider that phrase to be a reference to an Entity object, which becomes one of the input’s terms. If such an object hasn’t been referenced before in the file, it will be created.

>>> print(oracle.holdings[0].inputs[0].terms)
[Entity(name='the Java API', generic=True, plural=False)]

The JSON representation of a Rule can also have “mandatory” and “universal” fields. If omitted, the values of these fields are implied as False. “universal” means that the Rule applies whenever its inputs are present. “mandatory” means that when Rule applies, the court has no discretion and must accept the outputs.

>>> print(oracle.holdings[0].mandatory)
True

The JSON can also contain fields representing Enactments. It identifies a passage of legislative text with a United States Legislative Markup identifier that shows the “path” to the text. In this case, “us” refers to the jurisdiction (the US federal government), “usc” refers to the Code (the United States Code), “t17” specifies Title 17 of the United States Code, “s102” specifies Section 102 of Title 17, and “a” specifies subsection (a) of Section 102. If the relevant passage is less than the entire section or subsection, an “exact” field can identify the full text of the passage or “prefix” and “suffix” fields can be used to the phrase by what comes immediately before or after it. You don’t need to include “prefix” and “suffix” if you’re sure the phrase you’re trying to select only occurs once in the statute subdivision you’ve cited. Alternatively, a passage can be saved as a text field with pipe characters that split it into three parts for “prefix”, “exact”, and “suffix” fields.

For instance, to get just the phrase “original works of authorship”, we could have included this field in the JSON input:

"text": "in accordance with this title, in|original works of authorship|fixed"

We can also select() that same string to change the Enactment's selected text after loading the Enactment:

>>> to_select = "in accordance with this title, in|original works of authorship|fixed"
>>> oracle.holdings[0].enactments[0].select(to_select)

And we can use the selected_text() method to verify that the Enactment’s selected text has changed.

>>> oracle.holdings[0].enactments[0].selected_text()
'…original works of authorship…'

The “name” field is a nickname that can be used to refer to the passage again later in the same file. For any Factor or Enactment object, you can add a “name” field and assign a unique string value as the name. If you need to refer to the object again in the list of Holdings you’re importing, you can replace the object with the name string. This means a Holding object could have “input”, “despite” and “output” fields containing lists of string indentifiers of Factors defined elsewhere. Enactment objects can be replaced the same way in the “enactments” and “enactments_despite” fields.

>>> holdings_to_read[0]["enactments"]["name"]
'copyright protection provision'

In the second holding in the loaded dictionary representing a holding, we can see where the enactment is referenced by its name “copy protection provision” instead of being repeated in its entirety.

>>> pprint(holdings_to_read[1]["enactments"])
['copyright protection provision']

There can also be an “enactments_despite” field, which identifies legislative text that doesn’t need to be present for the Rule to apply, but that also doesn’t negate the validity of the Rule.

JSON API Specification

An OpenAPI JSON schema specification for AuthoritySpoke holdings can be generated from a authorityspoke.holdings.Holding. This example shows how to generate the schema as a Python dict and then view just the “properties” field for the Holding model.

>>> from authorityspoke.holdings import Holding
>>> schema = Holding.schema()
>>> schema["properties"]
{'rule': {'$ref': '#/definitions/Rule'}, 'rule_valid': {'title': 'Rule Valid', 'default': True, 'type': 'boolean'}, 'decided': {'title': 'Decided', 'default': True, 'type': 'boolean'}, 'exclusive': {'title': 'Exclusive', 'default': False, 'type': 'boolean'}, 'generic': {'title': 'Generic', 'default': False, 'type': 'boolean'}, 'absent': {'title': 'Absent', 'default': False, 'type': 'boolean'}}

The schema can also be exported as JSON using the authorityspoke.holdings.Holding.schema_json() method.