Abstracts: Bayesian Analysis in Law: Papers presented at Conference: The Many Faces of Contemporary Philosophy and Theory of Law

Abstracts have been posted of papers presented at the Conference: The Many Faces of Contemporary Philosophy and Theory of Law, held 23-24 March 2013, at Jagellonian University, Cracow, Poland. The conference included a special working group on Bayesian analysis in law, abstracts of papers of which begin on page 6 of the abstracts volume and are excerpted below:

Dr Jeroen Keppens: Bayesian Perspectives on the Value of Evidence. Abstract:

Given the interdisciplinary audience, I would like to introduce the Bayesian approach to evidential reasoning in Law. Then I plan to move on the Bayesian modeling techniques and the various concerns and difficulties that arise from it.

Paweł Banaś and Krzysztof Kasparek: Some remarks about controversies concerning applying Bayes theorem to criminal policy-making. Abstract:

The following paper aims at summarizing a discussion concerning the exploitation of Baysesian analysis within criminal policy-making, namely problems with the so called postprison civil commitment of sex offenders as sexually violent predators (SVPs) employed currently in some of the US states. During this process it is determined whether a former convict will be “classified” as SVP. Typically, actuarial instruments are used in order to help decide on this issue. Recently, Richard Wollert has pointed out that exploitation of Bayesian theorem may prove useful in this type of cases when addressing at least some of the questions that may arise. However, his ideas were met with much criticism within risk-assessment community. In this paper we want to present main arguments of both sides of the debate and point to some of the possible problems with Bayesian analysis as used in forensic psychology.

Piotr Bystranowski: Czy da się nauczyć prawników statystyki? Sieci bayesowskie a unikanie błędów probabilistycznych w rozumowaniach prawniczych. Abstract:

Od lat siedemdziesiątych i czasów przełomowych eksperymentów Kahnemana i Tversky’ego powszechnym stało się przekonanie, iż ludzkie osądy w warunkach niepewności często dają rezultaty systematycznie i rażąco niezgodne z regułami matematycznego rachunku prawdopodobieństwa, w tym zwłaszcza z tzw. wzorem Bayesa. Od błędów tego rodzaju nie jest wolna sala sądowa. Przeciwnie – wyniki szeregu procesów karnych pokazują, że wymiar sprawiedliwości jest podatny na wiele błędów w rozumowaniach probabilistycznych (z tzw. złudzeniem prokuratora na czele). Ich skutkiem bywa, na przykład, przypisanie zbyt dużej pewności materiałowi dowodowemu, który z formalnego punktu widzenia zdaje się być dalece nierozstrzygający. Pociąga to za sobą pytanie, w jaki sposób rozwiązać ową ewidentną niezgodność mię-dzy intuicyjnymi rozumowaniami w warunkach niepewności a formalnymi metodami probabilistycznymi. [...] Tych mankamentów zdaje się unikać proponowana przez Normana Fentona i Martina Neila wizualizacja przy pomocy sieci bayesowskich. W ten sposób można modelować nawet najbardziej skomplikowany materiał dowodowy w sposób przejrzysty dla laika. Rola stron procesu ograniczałaby się tu do sprecyzowania prawdopodobieństw a priori i zależności między poszczególnymi zmiennymi, zaś zadanie skonstruowania architektury sieci pozostawiano by ekspertom. O prawomocności obliczeń dokonywanych „pod spodem” można by przekonać strony na prostych przykładach, z wykorzystaniem np. drzewek zdarzeniowych. Zatem zastosowanie sieci bayesowskich w procesie miałoby być, zdaniem Fentona i Neila, najprostszym sposobem uniknięcia błędów probabilistycznych bez konieczności podejmowania beznadziejnego zadania, jakim jest nauczenie prawników statystyki.

Bartosz Janik: Some remarks concerning Bayesian rationality in Law. Abstract:

This paper aims at providing some remarks concerning Bayesian decision theory (BDT) and rationality in the legal perspective. As a first point I would like to provide a philosophical account of rationality and I will try to, while focusing on most appropriate meaning of it, to judge it from a legal point of view. It will be clear that the general notion of legal rationality is very complicated and we must set some particular goals to achieve a more global perspective. In my paper, I will focus on legal reasoning and will try to adopt Rescher’s distinction of cognitive/practical/evaluative rationality for the purpose of this analysis. The main point of this part will be the evaluation, to what extent risk aversion is connected with rationality. The thesis will be formulated in the following manner: the mechanisms of risk avoidance could serve as local rationality–triggers (as to oppose skepticism in Rescher’s terminology and deal with imperfection of our cognitive resources). The second point will be the attempt to show the connection between Bayesian decision theory (which focuses on error minimizing and thus, risk avoidance) and rationality. I will introduce basic formalism of BDT and show how, on that basis, we could formulate the local rationality for legal decision making. Again, the central notion will be the risk and I will present formal mechanism of risk avoidance in BDT. The notion of rationality, as a risk optimizer, will be proposed for this local environment. The last point of the analysis will be the answer to the question to what extent we are free from legal–theoretic assumptions in formulations of rationality. It turns out that the choice of an underlying theory of law will always determine our global notion of rationality but in the local perspective we could formulate general tools and concepts.

Izabela Skoczeń: Why should a lawyer calculate the probability of implicature formation? Abstract:

This paper aims at providing examples of possible applications of methods for calculating the probability of implicature formation (with the use of the bayesian method) in legal situations. The basis for the present considerations will be the notion of scalar implicatures, based on the gricean approach to Pragmatics. Scalars are based on conventional meanings attributed to words with the use of lexical scales (Horn). Placing a word in a definite position in a scale enables the speakers to attribute it a definite meaning, that does not have to be consistent with the lexical meaning that would be understood with the use of classical logic. [...] As experiments have proven, in contexts with data deficit the probability of definite implicature formation is rather not intuitive. A quite striking example is the following situation: if while describing three objects, the speakers has information concerning the features of only two of them, the hearer seems more prone to infer, that the third item disposes of the same feature while hearing an utterance with the numeral “two”, rather than “some”. This surprising result seems most vital for lawyers, as it conveys a hidden pattern of linguistic manipulation. The conventional implicature that should be cancelled due to pragmatic reasons is so strong, that it still influences the meaning. Imagine, that we have three suspects A,B,C and we know that A and B were at the crime scene that day. We don’t know, whether C was at the crime scene. If the probability of omitting scalar implicature cancellation is higher when using expressions like some, rather than numerals, C’s defendant should rather say “Some of the suspects were at the crime scene.” rather than “Two were at the crime scene.”. The later formulation, according to Goodman and Stuhlm¨uller calculations, would boost the probability of the court inferring the implicature that C was also at the crime scene that day. This observation opens an entire new range of possibilities of manipulating implicature formation in contexts, where the hearer is aware of the speaker’s data being insufficient. It is often the in judicial environments, when the provided evidence is too scarce.

For full text of the papers, please contact the authors.

HT Bartosz Janik

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

Articles on legal information or decision making in new issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

The new issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (10(2), June 2013) includes several articles on legal information or decision making:

• Doug Williams: Do Racial Preferences Affect Minority Learning in Law Schools?
• Andreas Glöckner and Christoph Engel: Can We Trust Intuitive Jurors? Standards of Proof and the Probative Value of Evidence in Coherence-Based Reasoning
• Christina L. Boyd, David A. Hoffman, Zoran Obradovic and Kosta Ristovski: Building a Taxonomy of Litigation: Clusters of Causes of Action in Federal Complaints
• Ryan C. Black and James F. Spriggs II: The Citation and Depreciation of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent
• William C. Thompson, Suzanne O. Kaasa and Tiamoyo Peterson: Do Jurors Give Appropriate Weight to Forensic Identification Evidence?

HT @aabibliographer

Call for Papers: LVI 2013: Law via the Internet Conference

The call for papers and presentation proposals has been issued for LVI 2013: Law via the Internet Conference, to be held 26-27 September 2013 on the Channel Island of Jersey.

The conference Website does not seem to state the deadline for submitting papers or proposals. If you know the submission deadline, please feel free to tell us in the comments to this post.

[UPDATE 11 February 2013: The conference organizers now say the submission deadline is 31 March 2013.]

Papers are invited on the topics covered by any of the seven tracks in which the conference program is divided:

• E-Learning: distance, blended, open, mobile, gaming, MOOCing and more?
• Online legal information – starting from scratch
• Legal knowledge in the age of the semantic web
• Communicating our work: journals, blogs and other ways of publishing about open access
• Privacy v open government in legal publishing
• Emerging patterns of information access and usage
• Technological development and free access to law

The conference Twitter account is @JerseyLVI2013 and the conference hashtag is #lvi2013

For details about the tracks, please see the track Websites.

For more details about the conference, please see the conference Website.

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

Walton: Argument from analogy in legal rhetoric

Professor Dr. Douglas Walton of the University of Windsor has published Argument from analogy in legal rhetoric, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here is the abstract:

This paper applies recent work on scripts and stories developed as tools of evidential reasoning in artificial intelligence to model the use of argument from analogy as a rhetorical device of persuasion. The example studied is Gerry Spence’s closing argument in the case of Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corporation, said to be the most persuasive closing argument ever used in an American trial. It is shown using this example how argument from analogy is based on a similarity premise where similarity between two cases is modeled using the device of a story scheme from the hybrid theory of legal evidential reasoning (Bex in Arguments, stories and criminal evidence: a formal hybrid theory. Springer, Dordrecht 2011). It is shown how the rhetorical strategy of Spence’s argumentation in the closing argument interweaves argument from analogy with explanation through three levels.

JURIX 2012: 17-19 December

JURIX 2012: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems is being held 17-19 December 2012, at Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #jurix2012

Click here for archived Twitter tweets (in .csv format) from the conference.

Click here for the conference program.

Click here for the list of workshops and tutorials.

HT @jurixfoundation

7 September: Extended CfP Deadline for JURIX 2012

The call for papers submission deadline for JURIX 2012: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems has been extended to 7 September 2012.

Click here for the call for papers.

The conference will be held 17-19 December 2012 at the University of Amsterdam.

Papers are invited “on the advanced management of legal information and knowledge, covering foundations, methods, tools, systems and applications” concerning the following topics:

• Support for lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation;
• Support for the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation;
• Support for the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases;
• Support for police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations;
• Support for public administration, in applying regulations and managing information;
• Support for the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods;
• Systems and methods to support policies and legal issues for social networks;
• Retrieval of legal information;
• Legal education;
• Digital-rights management;
• Alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line;
• Regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes;
• Theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the legal domain;
• Models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures;
• Legal inference and argumentation;
• Verification and validation of legal knowledge systems;
• Management of legal information in the semantic web;
• XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts;
• Modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions;
• Methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems;
• Evaluation of systems using advanced informatics techniques in legal applications;
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems.

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Dr. Rinke Hoekstra.

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.