A Rapid Review Regarding the Concept of Legal Requirements in Requirements Engineering

2025-09-07

AI Summary

This study addresses core conceptual challenges in requirements engineering (RE) concerning legal requirements (LRs)—including definitional ambiguity, inconsistent conceptualization, ill-defined attributes, and weak empirical grounding. Adopting a rapid literature review methodology, we systematically coded and analyzed how LRs are defined, classified, assigned functional or non-functional status, and characterized with respect to dynamism, overlap, and implementability across RE literature. Our analysis reveals, for the first time, that LRs are routinely reduced to static compliance baselines; suffer from definitional inconsistency, insufficient operationalization, and limited empirical validation; and lack consensus on theoretical positioning. We thus propose reconceptualizing LRs as a distinct requirement type characterized by normative bindingness, dynamic evolution, and cross-domain dependency. This work establishes a rigorous conceptual foundation and empirical basis for modeling, verifying, and governing LRs in RE practice.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Description Logics
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Conceptual Inference and Reasoning
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

Out of a personal puzzlement, recent peer review comments, and demonstrable confusion in the existing literature, the paper presents a rapid review of the concept of legal requirements (LRs) in requirements engineering (RE) research. According to reviewing results, a normative understanding of LRs has often been present, although proper definitions and conceptual operationalizations are lacking. Some papers also see LRs as functional and others as non-functional requirements. Legal requirements are often characterized as being vague and complex, requiring a lot of effort to elicit, implement, and validate. These characterizations supposedly correlate with knowledge gaps among requirements engineers. LRs are also seen to often change and overlap. They may be also prioritized. According to the literature, they seem to be also reluctantly implemented, often providing only a minimal baseline for other requirements. With these and other observations, the review raises critical arguments about apparent knowledge gaps, including a lack of empirical evidence backing the observations and enduring conceptual confusion.

Problem

• Clarifying inconsistent definitions of legal requirements in engineering research
• Addressing knowledge gaps in eliciting complex legal requirements implementation
• Resolving conceptual confusion and lack of empirical evidence regarding LRs

Innovation

• Rapid review of legal requirements concept
• Identified normative understanding lacking definitions
• Highlighted knowledge gaps empirical evidence