Editing Philosophy (section)

== The answer: an open operating system for legal data ==

Dura Lex is architected as an '''operating system for law''':

* A '''jurisdiction-agnostic kernel''' — protocols, data types, URI schema, independent of any country
* '''Jurisdiction drivers''' — one plugin per legal system (France and EU today, designed for any country)
* A '''robust ingestion pipeline''' — structured, versioned, reproducible
* '''Services''' — MCP server for AI agents, web portal for humans, full-text search with per-language stemming

France is the first implementation, not the scope. The schema follows the OpenStreetMap model: a single <code>documents</code> table with JSONB tags. Six universal structural kinds (<code>legislation</code>, <code>decision</code>, <code>record</code>, <code>notice</code>, <code>section</code>, <code>chunk</code>) cover every document type we have encountered across 25+ jurisdictions tested. Legal categories live in tags, not in the schema. Adding a jurisdiction requires zero schema migration.

=== Open source, open data ===

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Component !! License !! Rationale
|-
| Software || '''MIT''' || Anyone can use, fork, embed, commercialize without restriction
|-
| Enriched data || '''ODbL''' || Share-alike — improvements flow back to the commons, no one can close the data
|-
| Raw source data || Per-source (Licence Ouverte, CC0, etc.) || Government open data
|}

The OpenStreetMap model: permissive code, copyleft data.

=== Credibility by audit, not by reputation ===

Traditional legal publishing relies on editorial curation — selection, ranking, interpretation. This work has immense value, but it implies a filter.

Our approach: discard nothing, structure everything, and make every assertion traceable to its source. Authority comes from '''traceability''', not from a name on the cover.

=== Doubt is always expressed ===

The system should never pretend to certainty it does not have. Missing data, low-quality sources, incomplete coverage, untested jurisdictions — all should be surfaced, never hidden.

A tool that tells you "here is the answer" without showing where it looked, what it found, and what it might have missed — that is a black box.

A tool where every step is inspectable, every limitation is stated, and every source is cited — that is a digital common.

=== Unique in the landscape ===

We have analyzed 80+ legal MCP servers across 40+ jurisdictions. The vast majority are simple API relays with no behavioral framing. Dura Lex is the only project with mandatory safety guidelines injected before every research session, and the only one with a quality feedback mechanism allowing the AI to report issues in the data.