Palermo: Logique, Probabilité et Rhétorique dans l’Argumentation Juridique

Angela Palermo of l’Université de Franche-Comté has published Logique, Probabilité et Rhétorique dans l’Argumentation Juridique, Revue de Synthèse, 133(3), pp. 319-344 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

Judicial reasoning has often been seen as mere rhetoric. Yet, as I argue here, this reasoning actually stems from the exigencies of truth. This in turn requires questioning the relationship between logic and rhetoric in the legal field. The logic referred to is probability, which is most appropriate to pragmatic rationality. Hence, to shed light on judicial reasoning, this essay puts the relationship between judicial logic and probabilistic logic in historical perspective whilst taking into account the existing literature on the topic.

HT @aldofont

Applications Invited: Summer School on Law and Logic

Applications, with a submission deadline of 31 March 2013, are invited for the Summer School on Law and Logic to be held 15-26 July 2013 at European University Institute in Florence.

Here is background information:

Basic course: Logic, argumentation, and legal reason

The first part of the class (seven days) is the basic course: “Logic, argumentation, and legal reason.” This basic course offers a detailed presentation of propositional and predicate deductive logic, as well as the use of logic for capturing representing deontic and Hohfeldian modalities, analogical reasoning and inference to the best explanation. It also presents some aspects of non-deductive reasoning in law, such as defeasible reasoning, including argumentation schemes and inductive reasoning. Throughout the course we pay careful attention to the way in which these methods of argument can assist legal analysis. We believe that the kind of background in formal logic we offer in this course can be a very powerful tool for use in legal theory, for developing doctrinal legal research, for working in legal informatics (the application of computer programs to the analysis of law), and, more generally, for the practice of law.

Special course: Logic, argumentation and the law of evidence

The second part of the course (three days) is a special course: “Logic, argumentation and the law of evidence.” In this part of the course we focus on the methods of argument and reasoning that are specific to doctrines of Evidence law, both in European jurisdictions and in the United States. It includes: comparison of doctrines of evidence law in European jurisdiction and the United States, a detailed explanation of Bayesian reasoning and its application to evidentiary reasoning, evidence and argumentation theory, presumptions, burdens of proof and burdens of production, concepts of relevance in the law of evidence, the logic and epistemology of testimony, and modes of logical inference, causality, and scientific evidence in evidence law.

The Summer School is jointly hosted by the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and the Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.). It is also sponsored by the Cardozo Law School (New York, N.Y., U.S.A.), Cirsfid-University of Bologna (Italy), the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), the European Academy of Legal Theory, and a grant from the Erasmus Lifelong Learning Programme.

The professors of the Summer School:

Scott Brewer, Henry Prakken, Nino Rotolo, Bartosz Brozek, Giovanni Sartor, Michele Taruffo, Peter Tillers

HT IAAIL

Doctoral Consortium: RuleML 2012 @ ECAI

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 25 June 2012 — has been issued for the Doctoral Consortium at RuleML 2012 @ ECAI: The 6th International Symposium on Rules, to be held 27 August 2012, in Montpellier, France.

The consortium is being held in conjunction with ECAI 2012: The 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Here is a description of the Doctoral Consortium and of the paper requirements:

The RuleML 2012 Doctoral Consortium is an initiative of the International Symposium on Rules, RuleML, to attract and promote Ph.D. research in the area of Rules and Markup Languages. The doctoral symposium offers to students a close contact with leading experts on the field, as well as the opportunity to present and discuss their ideas in a dynamic and friendly setting.

The accepted thesis descriptions will be presented to an interested audience and subject to discussion with a panel of senior researchers, and we expect submissions on any (but not limited to) of this year’s RuleML2012@ECAI topics.

Students are invited to submit an original description of their work addressing the following aspects:

• A clear formulation of the research question.
• An identification of the significant problems in the field of research.
• An outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state of existing solutions.
• A presentation of any preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far.
• A sketch of the applied research methodology.
• A description of the Ph.D. project’s contribution to the problem solution.
• A discussion of how the suggested solution is different, new, or better as compared to existing approaches to the problem.

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Professor Dr. Monica Palmirani.

Boer and van Engers: Wetsanalyse met ontologieën en regels

Dr. Alexander Boer and Professor Dr. Tom van Engers have posted Wetsanalyse met ontologieën en regels, slides of a presentation given at the workshop Wetsanalyse met ontologie en regels, held in Spring 2012 at the Leibniz Center for Law at the University of Amsterdam, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The presentation covers rules, norms, policy making, argumentation, the application of legal rules, and the analysis of non-compliance with law.

Abraham, Gabbay, and Schild on Contrary-to-time Conditionals in Talmudic Legal Logic

M. Abraham, Professor Dr. Dov M. Gabbay of King’s College London Department of Computer Science, and Professor Dr. Uri J. Schild of Bar Ilan University Department of Computer Science, have published Contrary-to-time Conditionals in Talmudic Logic, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law. Here is the abstract:

We consider conditionals of the form A ⇒ B where A depends on the future and B on the present and past. We examine models for such conditionals arising in Talmudic legal cases. We call such conditionals contrary to time conditionals.

Three main aspects will be investigated:

1. Inverse causality from future to past, where a future condition can influence a legal event in the past (this is a man-made causality).

2. Comparison with similar features in modern law.

3. New types of temporal logics arising from modelling the Talmudic examples.

We shall see that we need a new temporal logic, which we call Talmudic temporal logic with linear open advancing future and parallel changing past, based on two parameters for time.

Morrison on The Likelihood-ratio Framework and Forensic Evidence in Court

Dr. Geoffrey Stewart Morrison of the University of New South Wales Forensic Voice Comparison Laboratory has published The likelihood-ratio framework and forensic evidence in court, International Journal of Evidence and Proof, 16(1), 1-29 (2012). Here is the abstract:

In R v T the Court of Appeal concluded that the likelihood-ratio framework should not be used for the evaluation of evidence except ‘where there is a firm statistical base’. The present article argues that the court’s opinion is based on misunderstandings of statistics and of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence. The likelihood-ratio framework is a logical framework and not itself dependent on the use of objective measurements, databases and statistical models. The ruling is analysed from the perspective of the new paradigm for forensic-comparison science: the use of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence; a strong preference for the use of objective measurements, databases representative of the relevant population, and statistical models; and empirical testing of the validity and reliability of the forensic-comparison system under conditions reflecting those of the case at trial.

Call for Papers: Argumentation 2012

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 7 September 2012 — has been issued for Argumentation 2012: International Conference on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law, to be held 26 October 2012, at the Masaryk University Faculty of Law, in Brno, Czech Republic.

According to the conference announcement:

The conference consists of four workshops/streams, each specialized in a specific and unique method of studying legal argumentation:

• Formal Methods in Legal Reasoning
• Law and Literature
• Law and Language
• Visualization of Law

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• Formal and quantitative models of legal reasoning
• Logical tools in designing legal arguments
• Argumentation schemes, models of legal inference
• Mathematical and computational tools for modelling arguments and reasoning
• Evidence, burdens of persuasion and proof
• Interpretation of literature in jurisprudence
• Artistic description of contemporary law
• Exploitation of literature in legal education
• Literature in legal argumentation
• Literature in rationalization of law
• Use of literature in court decisions
• Propaganda in service of law and jurisprudence
• Speech and register analysis
• Symbols and communication in law
• IT, language and law
• Literary analysis of law
• Natural language
• Analysis of legal narratives
• Rhetorical devices in legal reasoning
• Media studies
• Multisensory law
• Visualisation in legal education
• Visualising legal reasoning
• Argument mapping
• Structuring the complexity of law via visualisation
• Visual literacy in law
• Pictorial law

For more information, please see the call.

HT Jurix.

Applications Invited: Summer School on Law and Logic 2012

Applications are invited to the Summer School on Law and Logic 2012, to be held 16-20 July 2012, in Florence, Italy.

Here is a description of the school:

The Summer School on Law and Logic is the first course ever to provide a comprehensive introduction to the wide variety of uses of logic in the law. Our aim at this Summer School is to provide law students, graduate law students, and legal professionals with a knowledge of the methods of formal logic and the ability to apply those methods to the analysis and critical evaluation of legal arguments and sources of law (including statutes, cases, regulations, constitutional provisions).

The Summer School includes the basics of propositional and predicate deductive logic, as well as the use of logic for capturing representing deontic and Hohfeldian modalities, analogical reasoning and inference to the best explanation. It also addresses presents some aspects of non-deductive reasoning in law, such as defeasible reasoning, including argumentation schemes and inductive reasoning.

The school’s faculty are:

• Scott Brewer
• Henry Prakken
• Nino Rotolo
• Giovanni Sartor
• Peter Tillers

The hosts and sponsors of the school are:

• European University Institute
• Harvard Law School
• Cardozo School of Law
• CIRSFID-University of Bologna
• University of Groningen
• European Academy of Legal Theory

For more information, please see the school’s Website.

HT Giovanni Sartor.

Call for Papers: DEON 2012

A call for papers — with abstract submission deadline of 27 February 2012 and full paper submission deadline of 5 March 2012 — has been issued for DEON 2012: The 11th International Conference on Deontic Logic in Computer Science, to be held 16-18 June 2012, at the University of Bergen, in Bergen, Norway.

Papers are invited on general topics, and on the “special theme” of “Deontic Logic and Social Choice.” The general topics are:

• the logical study of normative reasoning, including formal systems of deontic logic, defeasible normative reasoning, logics of action, logics of time, and other related areas of logic;
• the formal analysis of normative concepts and normative systems;
• the formal specification of aspects of norm-governed multi-agent systems and autonomous agents, including (but not limited to) the representation of rights, authorization, delegation, power, responsibility and liability;
• normative aspects of protocols for communication, negotiation and multi-agent decision making;
• the formal representation of legal knowledge;
• the formal specification of normative systems for the management of bureaucratic processes in public or private administration;
• applications of normative logic to the specification of database integrity constraints.

The special theme topics are:

• Normative system selection and optimization
• Merging and aggregation of norms
• Compliance and enforcement strategies for norms
• Game theoretic aspects of deontic reasoning
• Norms, culture and and shared values
• Violation detection and norm creation mechanisms
• Simulation of dynamics in normative systems
• Emergence of norms
• Norm change

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT IAAIL.

Call for Papers: SPLeT 2012: Workshop on Semantic Processing of Legal Texts

[NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect the extended deadline of 19 February 2012. HT Simonetta Montemagni.]

A call for papers — with extended submission deadline of 19 February 2012 — has been issued for SPLeT 2012: Workshop on Semantic Processing of Legal Texts, to be held 27 May 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey.

SPLeT 2012 is being held in conjunction with LREC 2012: The Language Resources and Evaluation Conference.

Papers for SPLeT 2012 are invited on the following topics:

• Construction, extension, merging, customization of legal language resources, e.g. terminologies, ontologies
• Information retrieval and extraction from legal texts
• Semantic annotation of legal textual corpora
• Legal text processing
• Machine learning of legal texts
• Multilingual aspects of legal text semantic processing
• Legal thesauri mapping
• Automatic Classification of legal documents
• Logical analysis of legal language
• Automated parsing and translation of natural language arguments into a logical formalism
• Linguistically-oriented XML mark up of legal arguments
• Dialogue protocols for argumentation
• Legal argument ontology
• Computational theories of argumentation that are suitable to natural language
• Controlled language systems for law

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Dr. Adam Wyner.