Matthew Carey, Esq., of Thomson Reuters has published Holdings about holdings: Modeling contradictions in judicial precedent, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law.
Click here for a preprint of the article.
Here is the abstract:
This paper attempts to formalize the differences between two methods of analysis used by judicial opinions in common law jurisdictions to contradict holdings posited by earlier opinions: “disagreeing” with the holdings of the earlier opinions and “attributing” holdings to the prior opinions. The paper will demonstrate that it is necessary to model both methods of analysis differently to generate an accurate picture of the state of legal authority in hypothetical examples, as well as in an example based on Barry Friedman’s analysis of the “stealth overruling” of Miranda v. Arizona through subsequent judicial interpretations. Because the question of whether “disagreement” and “attribution” need to be modeled separately relates to contradictions rather than to subtler interactions between holdings such as “distinguishing,” it can be answered using the simple technique of modeling holdings as propositional variables and evaluating the holdings using truth tables.
Tags: Artificial intelligence and law, Common law information systems, Constitutional law information systems, Matt Carey, Matthew Carey, Miranda v. Arizona, Modeling distinguishing cases, Modeling distinguishing of previous court decisions, Modeling distinguishing of previous judicial decisions, Modeling holdings in court decisions, Modeling holdings in judicial decisions, Modeling judicial disagreement with previous court decisions, Modeling judicial disagreement with previous judicial decisions, Modeling overruling of court decisions, Modeling overruling of judicial decisions, Modeling ratio decidendi in court decisions, Modeling ratio decidendi in judicial decisions, Modeling rulings in court decisions, Modeling rulings in judicial decisions, Stare decisis, Stealth overruling
