---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- de
tags:
- legal
- statutory-interpretation
- german-law
pretty_name: Interpretive Canons (decision-level)
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: decisions.jsonl
---

# Interpretive Canons — decision-level

Companion benchmark to the paper *Classifying Interpretive Canons at the
Sentence Level: A Benchmark from the German Federal Constitutional Court*. This
is the **decision-level** release: one record per fully (exhaustively) annotated
decision, intended for end-to-end evaluation that runs the full pipeline over a
whole decision. Only the 15 exhaustively annotated decisions are included; the
selectively annotated decisions are not, because their unannotated sentences are
not negatives. The companion **instance-level** benchmark (eight subtask files
with splits) is at `felix453/interpretive-canons-instances`.

## Record format (`decisions.jsonl`, one decision per line)

- `decision_name`: BVerfGE / file identifier.
- `plain_text`: the full text of the reasons (*Entscheidungsgründe*).
- `document_structure`: paragraph/sentence structure inherited from the L.L.Con
  corpus (`ebene1`, `absatz`, `satz`, ...), with character offsets into
  `plain_text`.
- `readings`: every annotated reading (Deutung) as a character span (`start`,
  `end`, `satz_id`) with its criteria — `abstrakt`, `selbst_aufgestellt`,
  `konkretes_gesetz` (list of provisions), `bestimmt`,
  `vermutlich_keine_behauptung` — and the free-text reasonings.
- `arguments`: every annotated (reading, candidate) pair as a character span
  with `deutung_id`, the `general_argument` gate (`present` + `reasoning`), and
  the four canon labels `wortlaut`/`systematik`/`geschichte`/`zweck` (null when
  the gate is negative).

## Loading

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("felix453/interpretive-canons-decisions", split="train")
print(ds[0]["decision_name"], len(ds[0]["readings"]))
```

## Raw annotations (provenance)

The raw, pre-merge Label Studio export these data are built from is available at
[`felix453/interpretive-canons-raw-export`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/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`.