Henrique Marcos

The “Legal Rule Tagger” Teaching Tool

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by

Henrique Marcos
in

I’m happy to share my new interactive teaching tool, the Legal Rule Tagger.

Available here: https://henriquejbmarcos.github.io/legal-rule-tagger/

This tool is designed for law students and instructors. It helps users tag and visualise the logical structure of legal rules — particularly the relationships between consequences, cumulative conditions, and alternative conditions.

How it works

  1. Paste a rule or statutory provision into the editor.
    The tool strips formatting so everything appears in the same look you see on the page (no hidden colours or backgrounds).
  2. Highlight text and tag it as one of three categories:
    • Consequence
    • Cumulative Condition
    • Alternative Condition
  3. The tagged excerpts appear in separate lists below the editor. Each excerpt keeps its numbering (Roman numerals for consequences, Arabic numerals for cumulative conditions, and letters for alternative conditions).
  4. Simultaneously, a Mind Map panel shows draggable nodes representing each tagged item, laid out visually. You can move them around to reflect logical relationships.
  5. Extra features:
    • Undo to remove your last tag
    • Export / Import your work as a .json file (so students can submit and instructors can reload)
    • Print / PDF view, arranging the rule text on top and tagged items below, on a clean white background

Because it’s browser-based with no installation required, students can use it anywhere, and instructors can embed the link in their syllabi.

Why it’s useful

  • It enforces clear structural thinking about legal rules.
  • The visual mind map helps students see how conditions feed into consequences or relate to one another.
  • The export/import feature means work is not lost and can be reviewed or edited later.
  • It standardises formatting (no surprises from copying from Word or PDFs).

Licensing & reuse

Legal Rule Tagger is free to use and adapt. It’s licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution, NonCommercial) — meaning you can share, modify, and teach with it, as long as you don’t use it commercially.

Originally built for Introduction to Law & Legal Reasoning for first-year law students at the European Law School, Maastricht University.
Created by Henrique Marcos, September 2025.

Available here: https://henriquejbmarcos.github.io/legal-rule-tagger/