Corpus/Temporal

Temporal Model

Overview

Legal documents exist in time. Articles are versioned (valid_from/valid_until). Decisions are point-in-time events. The schema handles both with the same promoted columns.

date and date_end semantics by kind

kind	date =	date_end =
legislation (statute, versioned article)	valid_from (entry into force)	valid_until (repeal, amendment)
legislation (decree, regulation)	publication_date or entry_into_force	expiration (if any)
legislation (collective agreement)	filing_date or effective_date	expiration_date
legislation (guidance, circular)	publication_date	NULL (until superseded)
legislation (bill, debate)	publication_date	NULL
decision	decision_date	NULL
record (company)	creation_date	closure_date
record (person)	NULL	NULL
notice	publication_date	NULL
section	NULL	NULL
chunk	(inherited from parent)	NULL

Article versioning

Multiple versions of the same article = multiple documents with the same tags.cid (permanent article identity) and different date/date_end ranges.

<syntaxhighlight lang="sql"> -- Get the version of article 1147 CC in force on 2015-06-15 SELECT * FROM corpus.documents WHERE tags->>'cid' = 'LEGISCTA000006136353'

 AND date <= '2015-06-15'
 AND (date_end IS NULL OR date_end > '2015-06-15')

ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 1; </syntaxhighlight>

tags.cid is the permanent identity (CID from LEGI XML, or equivalent). It survives renumbering. Article 1382 and article 1240 have different id values but the relationship is captured in corpus.edges kind=replaces.

at_date in TagQuery

The reference resolver supports temporal queries via at_date:

<syntaxhighlight lang="python"> TagQuery(

   language="fr",
   kind="legislation",
   tag_filters=TagFilterSet.from_tags({"article_number": "1147", "code": "Code civil"}),
   at_date=date(2015, 6, 15),

) </syntaxhighlight>

Translated to SQL: <syntaxhighlight lang="sql"> WHERE language = 'fr'

 AND kind = 'legislation'
 AND tags @> '{"article_number": "1147", "code": "Code civil"}'
 AND date <= '2015-06-15'
 AND (date_end IS NULL OR date_end > '2015-06-15')

ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 1 </syntaxhighlight>

Non-Gregorian calendars

The date column always stores ISO/Gregorian dates. The original calendar representation is preserved in tags:

Calendar	Tag	Example	Used by
Islamic (Hijri)	tags.date_hijri	"1445-08-15"	SA, AE, other ME
Japanese imperial era	tags.date_era_jp	"R06" (Reiwa 6 = 2024)	JP
Taiwan ROC (Minguo)	tags.date_roc_tw	"112" (= 2023)	TW

Conversion is done at ingestion time. The trigger and all queries use the ISO date column.

Enforcement status

For versioned text documents, tags.enforcement_status tracks the legal force:

Status	Meaning
in_force	Currently applicable
deferred_enforcement	Not yet in force, will be on a future date
deferred_repeal	Currently in force, repeal scheduled for a future date
repealed	Explicitly repealed by a subsequent act
superseded	Historical version — a newer version of the same article exists
never_in_force	Modified before its effective date, never applied
expired	Lapsed by its own terms (sunset clause, fixed-duration text)
annulled	Struck down by a court (e.g. constitutional review) — typically retroactive
transferred	Content moved to a different article or location (renumbering)
denounced	Collective agreement repudiated by one of the parties
disjoined	Version split into multiple separate articles
conditional	In force only under a specific interpretation (constitutional reservation)
pending	Emergency decree or provisional measure awaiting ratification

The boolean shortcut tags.in_force (true/false) enables simple filtering. Unlike enforcement_status, which is set once at ingest from the source data, in_force is dynamically recomputed by the refresh_in_force post-ingest job from the article's date and date_end columns. The two tags can therefore diverge over time:

• An article tagged deferred_enforcement becomes in_force=true once its effective date is in the past (the tag is not rewritten — only the boolean).
• An article tagged deferred_repeal becomes in_force=false once its date_end is in the past.
• An article tagged in_force becomes in_force=false if its date is in the future (rare — late-published versions).
• All other "not in force" states (repealed, superseded, expired, annulled, transferred, denounced, never_in_force, disjoined) are always in_force=false.

In short: enforcement_status answers "what is the legal lifecycle state of this version?", while in_force answers "is this version currently legally applicable?". Use in_force for filter queries, enforcement_status for display and warnings.

Transitional provisions

When a reform includes transitional rules (e.g., the 2016 French contract law reform: contracts signed before Oct 1, 2016 governed by old law), these are modeled as:

• A separate document (the transitional provision article)
• With edges to both the old and new versions
• The knowledge graph (future) encodes transitional provisions as QUALIFY nodes that route to the correct version based on temporal context