README.md

metadata

license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - de
task_categories:
  - text-classification
tags:
  - legal
  - statutory-interpretation
  - german-law
  - argument-mining
pretty_name: Interpretive Canons (instance-level)
configs:
  - config_name: argument
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: arguments/argument/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: arguments/argument/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: arguments/argument/test.json
  - config_name: wortlaut
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: arguments/wortlaut/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: arguments/wortlaut/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: arguments/wortlaut/test.json
  - config_name: systematik
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: arguments/systematik/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: arguments/systematik/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: arguments/systematik/test.json
  - config_name: geschichte
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: arguments/geschichte/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: arguments/geschichte/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: arguments/geschichte/test.json
  - config_name: zweck
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: arguments/zweck/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: arguments/zweck/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: arguments/zweck/test.json
  - config_name: nicht_abstrakt
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: deutungen/nicht_abstrakt/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: deutungen/nicht_abstrakt/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: deutungen/nicht_abstrakt/test.json
  - config_name: nicht_selbst_aufgestellt
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: deutungen/nicht_selbst_aufgestellt/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: deutungen/nicht_selbst_aufgestellt/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: deutungen/nicht_selbst_aufgestellt/test.json
  - config_name: konkretes_gesetz
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: deutungen/konkretes_gesetz/train.json
      - split: validation
        path: deutungen/konkretes_gesetz/validation.json
      - split: test
        path: deutungen/konkretes_gesetz/test.json

Interpretive Canons — instance-level

Companion benchmark to the paper Classifying Interpretive Canons at the Sentence Level: A Benchmark from the German Federal Constitutional Court. This is the instance-level release: one record per (subtask, candidate) pair, grouped into eight subtasks, each with decision-disjoint train/validation/test splits (no decision appears in more than one split). The companion decision-level release (one record per exhaustively annotated decision, for end-to-end pipeline evaluation) is at felix453/interpretive-canons-decisions.

Gold labels come from a single expert annotator. Text is German (Bundesverfassungsgericht decisions).

Subtasks and split sizes

The arguments family classifies (reading, candidate-sentence) pairs; the deutungen family classifies single reading sentences.

Subtask	Train	Validation	Test
argument	40	40	120
wortlaut	40	40	120
systematik	40	40	120
geschichte	40	40	120
zweck	40	40	120
nicht_abstrakt	80	80	240
nicht_selbst_aufgestellt	80	80	240
konkretes_gesetz	80	80	240

Record format

Each record is a JSON object {"id", "row", "observed"}. row holds the sentence(s) and the surrounding context, with the classified sentence marked by inline XML tags (<deutung>...</deutung> for readings, <potential_argument>...</potential_argument> for argument candidates) inside text_with_context. observed holds the gold labels for the subtask:

• observed.argument (0/1): does the candidate sentence justify the reading at all?
• observed.wortlaut (0/1): grammatical-canon argument?
• observed.systematik (0/1): systematic-canon argument?
• observed.geschichte (0/1): historical-canon argument?
• observed.zweck (0/1): objective-teleological-canon argument?
• observed.nicht_abstrakt (0/1): the statement is not abstract (concrete/case-bound).
• observed.nicht_selbst_aufgestellt (0/1): the statement is not self-advanced (cites only precedent).
• observed.konkretes_gesetz (list of strings): the concrete statutory provision(s) the reading interprets; empty list means none.

observed.reasoning is the annotator's free-text rationale where recorded.

Loading

from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("felix453/interpretive-canons-instances", "wortlaut")
print(ds["test"][0])

Raw annotations (provenance)

The raw, pre-merge Label Studio export these data are built from is available at felix453/interpretive-canons-raw-export. It retains two fields the postprocessing merge does not preserve: the per-reading determinate-content judgment bestimmt_moeglicheDeutung (dropped by the merge) and the un-flattened list of concrete provisions (the merge joins the entries into one unsplittable string). Join by Label Studio region id.