**The EUI has an open vacancy for a**
**Research Assistant in the**
**Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies**
**Florence, 11 November 2024**
**Reference: V/RA/RSC/96/2024**
**Who we are
**The **European University Institute (EUI)** at a glance:
- an international organisation set up in 1972;
- a research university focusing exclusively on postgraduate, doctoral and post-doctoral studies, and
advanced research;
- located in the hills overlooking the city of Florence, Italy.
The Institute also hosts the Historical Archives of the European Union.
The EUI's **Robert Schuman Centre for Advances Studies (RSCAS)** carries out research on the major issues
facing Europe, bridging the world of academia and practice through interdisciplinary and applied research.
The Research Assistant will be based at the **Centre for Judicial Cooperation** headed by Professor Deirdre
Curtin since January 2016.
Since its set up, in December 2011, the Centre has developed a wide network of
judges, lawyers and scholars, for the purpose of establishing a space for collaboration and exchange of
knowledge between legal practitioners and the academic community on topics related to judicial interaction
across various areas of law.
Through its activities and expertise, the Centre engages with both practitioners and
academics on various activities ranging from workshops and conferences to pure research and policy
endeavours.
In order to disseminate the results of its work, the Centre publishes open access papers, such as
handbooks, reports, and 'distinguished Lecture' papers addressing the judicial and academic communities.
**Employment details**
**Contract type **Part-time 33% (10/30, 13 hours and 20 minutes/week)
**Length of contract **6 months, start date 1 February 2025 (or soon after)
**Salary indication and **Grade: ASTAC1b step 1
**grade**
The basic net monthly salary after taxes is approximately 950 Euro, plus allowances
if applicable.
More information about conditions of employment is available here.
***
**Place of work **To be agreed with Project Director (salary simulation based on place of work
Florence, Italy)
**About the project**
**Project Directors **Prof. Deirdre Curtin, Prof. Erik Jones
**Project details **POLINE aims at developing an AI-powered pilot tool for the retrieval and analysis
of judicial principles of law in the CJEU and national case-law in Value Added Tax
(VAT).
The tool relies on AI techniques for extracting, clustering and linking judicial
principles of law and is embedded in a modular platform, consisting of a Legal
Database, Link Visualization and Customised Detection Module.
It covers the case
- law of the CJEU and the Italian, Swedish and Bulgarian Supreme Courts and will
be accessible to judges, other legal practitioners, tax policymakers and taxpayers.
The development of the tool will be based on a multidisciplinary approach
combining theory and practice of judicial decision-making for the study of the
concept of "judicial principle of law" and the analysis of the caselaw; legal
informatics methods for the creation of an ontology of judicial concepts in VAT and
training datasets of manually annotated judicial principles of law; AI, machine
learning, and NLP techniques for the automatic extraction of principles, the
detection of textual and semantic similarity, and network analysis.
The tool will be trialed in 3 online national testing events and disseminated in 3
national demonstration events and 1 final international conference.
The pilot tool
provides a robust and trustworthy use case of AI technologies for justice.
It will
provide non-discriminatory and effective access to justice.
Through its collection of
principles of law and NLP-powered search engine, the tool will assist judges in
accessing legal knowledge reducing their work overload.
Moreover, through the
Customised Detection Test Module, the tool will allow recipients of VAT measures
to identify judicial principles of law applied in a specific case and assess whether
VAT law is correctly applied.
By developing open-acces automated techniques of
knowledge extraction, the methods developed can be easily reused and expanded
to include other fields of law and other legal systems.
**Job description **The research assistant will provide research assistance to the Directors of the
project.
Main tasks shall include:
- Collaborating in drafting the deliverables of the project;
- Collaborating in the selection of cases for the pilot tool;
- Collaborating in the preparation of the testing materials;
- Collaboration in the preparation of the dissemination materials;
- Collaborating in the organisation of EUI based events;
- Participating in project events and meetings.
**Qualifications and experience**
**Qualifications and Essential**:
**Experience**
- Master of Arts in Law
- Previous demonstrated research activity on AI in judicial systems;
- Proven work experience in legal informatics and in international projec