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05 January 2022

New graph-based visualisation interface for UK laws

New visualisation platform developed at King’s makes it easier to work with complex legal texts.

Ethical and legal aspects

King’s Quantitative and Digital Law Lab (QuantLaw) has launched Graphie, a new graph-based visualisation interface for UK laws.

The interface provides a new concept in its aim to help users navigate complicated legislation through the use of complex-systems tools and a graph-theoretical approach, in order to enable the visualisation of the structural complexity of legal texts (e.g. Acts of Parliament).

The exploration and navigation of legal works is facilitated by the open-access nature of the metadata provided by the official UK government legislation website. Through Graphie, internal and external references within a legal text are captured and standardised, and subsequently mapped out to facilitate a visual exploration.

The Tree View of the platform provides a hierarchical network representation of the Act, following its structure (e.g. Parts, Chapters) by expanding nodes. The search box function enable users to navigate through the text through identification of key words.
The Tree View of the platform provides a hierarchical network representation of the Act, following its structure (e.g. Parts, Chapters) by expanding nodes. The search box function enable users to navigate through the text through identification of key words.

The interface was created by Dr Evan Tzanis, Research Associate in the Disordered Systems research group within King’s Department of Mathematics.

The project was tested on the Housing Act, and is funded via a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship grant led by Dr Pierpaolo Vivo, Reader in the Department of Mathematics at King's. 

Watch the video below for a brief guide through developments of the updated Network View functionality of Graphie, which provides a network representation of an Act where its sections are displayed as different coloured nodes.

Follow the QuantLaw Lab to find out more about the platform’s developments.

In this story

Dr Pierpaolo Vivo

Reader in Disordered Systems

Research Associate

Dr Alessia Annibale

Senior Lecturer in Disordered Systems