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In the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia is cultivated an unique polyglot computer system for constitutional comparable analysis - "VORONUM". His resource base contains 146 constitutions of different countries of the world (117 constitutions in English, 62 - in Russian, 20 - in Spanish and 3 - in French), International documents on Human rights (1237 documents of UN in English, 120 - in Russian, including 13 documents of the Council of Europe), English-Russian-Armenian thesaurus on fundamental constitutional notions including electronic dictionary (474 words and expressions) and Armenian-Russian-English-French dictionary of the main notions on Human rights including electronic dictionary.

The considerable increase of the volume of legal information has led to that the search of a necessary document, act, norm has become to represent a real problem. Traditional technology, even the best and most elaborate system of cross-reference between documents often fails to provide the user with the required information within a reasonable timespan, and more, but also to compare it with the same information met in the legislation of other countries of the world. To dissolve this problem, has been cultivated the system "VORONUM".

While creating this system, were discounted following two specialties: the main part of the users of legal resources are not specialists in the field of computer technologies. This means, that the process of the search of information has to be at most simple, and the results of the search-usual and informative. As a result in the system "VORONUM" has been entered the following subsystems, definitely making easier the work of users:

- search of the documents on Natural-language query Russian and English

- ranging of the documents ranked by relevance to the contents of the query

- indication of the found out phrases and expressions in the found documents.

For making easier the analysis of the documents in them are allocated the words and the phrases on which has been made a decision about the correspondence of a document to a query.

This specialty of the system definitely facilitates the work with the found documents and lets, if necessary, to look through only interested fragments of a large document.

How is realizing the search of documents? The program is doing unclear search calculating the degree of the relevance of a document to a query. It's going on the following way. At first from the requirement is dismissing "noisy" words which are not influencing to a sense of the query (for example, adverbs, pronouns). Then from the rest of the words are allocated the most important words, these which are met in the query a few times. Then are exposed the mutual relations between the most important and less important words, for example, if the expression "Constitutional control" is met twice this isn't the same if are repeated twice the words "constitution" and "control". Finally, analogically are exposed mutual relations between important words and between only less important words. Only after that the search begins.

As a result, will be found all the documents containing even a few words from the query. Anyway, all the found documents will ranked by relevance to the contents of your query. This means that at the top of the found documents will be situated that document which contains the parts statistically the most relevant to the text of the query. In the included 146 Constitutions the search, the indication and the classification are lasting 30-40 seconds.

It's important, that effectiveness of a search doesn't depend on the vocabulary of the field of the subject and it's the same as for the constitutional texts, as for legal documents on the direction of the subject.

The advantage of the system is that the assortment of the basic keywords and the expressions (thesaurus) is proposed to a user-not professional. This assortment is represented in the form of the Armenian-Russian-English dictionary (in WinWord97 or HTML format). The hypertext variants of the dictionary are classified on Armenian, Russian and English alphabets, which is very convenient and gives the opportunity: the first - to make acquaintance of the main constitutional notions, the second - to use the right translation of the legal term, and the third - to organize the query more quickly, precisely and regularly. For example, let's suppose that it's necessary to analyze the degree of the relevence to the norms on Human Rights in the Constitutions of the other countries. For this purpose we are searching the expression "human right", but a user of the system doesn't know this term in Russian or in English. He opens the dictionary of keywords classified on Armenian alphabet, finds the expression "human right", copies the English or Russian version from the same line and entering it in the query line, quickly receives ranged list of all the acts from the Constitutions of 146 countries where is met this expression. And more, it's possible to study and to enter into a separate document all the found and interested acts, articles and their fragments.

How is it realizing? Let me that studying the Constitution of any country you have to separate the articles of the Constitution which refer to the norms on human rights. From the list of the results of the search you choose that Constitution and look it through. Meeting the necessary fragment you click the Edit button and indicating and copying this fragment you enter it into the other act (file) of any kind.

Then analyzing and editing the received document you can without difficulty propose the variants of synthesis, determine the logic of these acts and articles. For making the constitutional comparable analysis more effective the World Wide Constitutions are divided into five groups on the state governmental system: presidential, half-presidential, parliamentary, monarchy and the other states. It permits to make a comparable analysis not only between the Constitutions, but also between the Constitutions of the states which have close structure of the powers, besides the time spent on the search and the quantity of the studying documents are reduced.

In the system it's provided to make a comparable analysis on any additional word or expression entered by a user through the keyboard in the corresponding window, and not included into the thesaurus.

The system is open and lets continuously to fill in the base of legal resources. The important specialty is the possibility operatively to look through all the base with help of standard program of Internet Browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator). On the display of computer is removed or the alphabet list of the countries of the world, either the map of the world. Indicating by cursor to a chosen country from the list or on the map you can look through and make an acquaintance with the text of the constitution on one or another language.

For more deeply information, analysis, comparison and contradiction between the main laws, particularly with the international documents on human rights, the system "VORONUM" contains also hypertext base of the main documents on human rights (1237 documents in English, 120 - in Russian). The search of one or other document may be realized as on the subject and contents of the document, as on the organ by which it has been adopted, for example, UN or the Council of Europe.

For convenient work in the International net Internet the system "VORONUM" contains the special assortment of electronical catalogues on International electronical legal resources. With the help of the catalogue you may enter to Web sites of the different parliaments of the countries of the world, communicate with the Constitutional Courts, Venice Commission, United Nations or international organizations working in the field of Human rights, send e-mail etc.

The complex usage of the base of the main laws, of the base of the international documents on Human rights and the base of the laws of other countries will let:

- to create universal scientific set of instruments for control and optimization of a unique worldwide legal informational space.

- in fact to facilitate the process of the projecting of the legislation, in the different countries

- to create new possibilities for improving and developing the training process.

The system "VORONUM" is irreplaceable electronical private library for students, postgraduate student, professors of the institutes, judges, lowers, legislative organizations, gouvernors and administrators, collaborators of juridical services of the apparatus of the governments and presidents, deputates of parliaments and members of the Constitutional Courts.

The acquaintance of the system have made by prof. Herman Schwarz, professor of law of Washington Collage of Law of American University of the USA, prof. Dominique Rousseau, Montpellier University, prof. Michel Lesage, the Paris 1 University Pantheon-Sorbonne, Mr. Pierre Garrone, Administrator of the Secretariat of the Venice Commission, Michel Melchior, the President of the Arbitrage Court of Belgium, Prof. Vincent Coussirat-Coustère, the Lille University, prof. Etienne Grisel from Switzerland, the delegation from the Constitutional Courts from Belarus, Bulgaria, Germany, Latvia, Yugoslavia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, and Tajikistan, participated in the third International Seminar in Yerevan "Electoral Disputes before the Constitutional Court" and the UniDem seminar, who evaluated the system positevely.

The system is registered in the National Agency of Copyright of the Republic of Armenia, N 00227 on 15 April, 1998.
 
 

Technical details.

File formats. The system "VORONUM" looks through files in Microsoft Word™ 2.0, 6.0, 7.0, HTML and ASCII (DOS, Windows) formats.

High-speed search. The system "VORONUM" looks through 30 Mb of text per minute on IBM PC 486.