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The paper presents an application of the FRBROO document model for defining an information ontology of legal resources that takes into account the dimension of time. FRBR-based paradigms are used within several existing projects in computer support of activities in the legal domain, but they are mostly oriented to bibliographic organization of documents without a real modeling of the peculiar characteristics of the legal domain. Also, all of them refer to the current version of the FRBR model, called FRBRER. Yet, in these years the FRBR model is undergoing a major revision and a new version using an object-oriented approach is being developed. Thus we first have updated the model of legal resources to rely on the new object-oriented model, called FRBROO. More importantly, consistency problems were corrected and the time dimension was introduced, which came very useful when considering the legal domain and dealing with legal resources. Therefore, while it is not in the scope of this paper to define an abstract model of the norms (e.g. obligations, permissions, etc.) or the representation of the norms (e.g. rules model), we rather focus our attention on the abstract description of the normative acts lifecycle and how it is possible to fill the gap between the rule modeling and the structure of the legal resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting upon the course of the Reformation in 1557, Heinrich Bullinger, successor to Zwingli and leader of the reformed church in Switzerland from 1532 until 1575, presented a gloomy and pessimistic assessment. God had revealed his truth to the German nation in these times and his people had proved themselves ungrateful. The immediate consequence of this infidelity, Bullinger believed, were the dreadful wars between the Emperor and the Protestants ravaging Europe. France, Germany and Italy were engulfed in battles, and Swiss soldiers, despite the persistent opposition of the reform movement to mercenary service, continued to die on foreign territory. Within the Confederation the Protestant cities of Basle and Berne pursued their protracted quarrels with Calvin's Geneva over matters of doctrine and church polity, whilst the Catholics, strengthened by the Council of Trent, were everywhere resurgent. The despair of the aging reformer at his desk in Zurich accurately reflects the general disappointment among Swiss reformers that the soaring hopes of the first generation had not been fulfilled. The Reformation had not, as Zwingli had originally anticipated, culminated in a unified alliance of evangelical states under the leadership of Zurich. Instead half the Confederation remained defiantly loyal to Catholicism, and even those states which had eventually followed Zurich into the Protestant camp pursued their own models of reform with a stubborn and, at times, cantankerous independence. Any survey of the Reformation in Switzerland should reflect this enduring diversity, a phenomenon which has to some extent been masked by the subsequent success of Zurich and Geneva in impressing their reforming ideals on a wider European movement later in the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]