Mecellem Semantic Protocol: A New Framework for AI in Legal Reasoning

An arXiv paper (2608.04011) presents an innovative framework aimed at incorporating artificial intelligence into the legal field, tackling the persistent epistemic and methodological challenges faced by conventional law. The authors introduce the 'Mecellem semantic protocol,' which is based on ontology and seeks to harmonize normative consistency with societal and institutional changes. They critique current approaches—such as codification, positivist systematization, and quantitative methods like jurimetrics—as inadequate for understanding the context-sensitive nature of legal interpretation. The paper asserts that legal reasoning transcends mere data retrieval or statistical analysis, necessitating a dynamic reconstruction using ontologically defined entity categories and varied knowledge layers. Inspired by the Mecelle, the Ottoman civil code, this protocol serves as a semantic framework. The paper can be found on arXiv with the identifier 2608.04011.