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

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.

Legal Communication Papers @ NCA 2012

Many papers on legal communication were presented at NCA 2012: The 98th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, held November 15-18, 2012 in Orlando, Florida, USA. Here is a list of those I could identify. For abstracts and full text, please contact the authors. (If you know of other papers on legal communication presented at NCA 2012, please feel free to identify them in the comments to this post. Click here for the complete NCA 2012 program.)

• Daniel Bergan and Richard T. Cole, Michigan State University: Call Your Legislator: The Impact of Citizen Contacts on Legislative Voting
• Mike Bergmaier, Penn State University: From Miscegenation to Contemporary Marriage Equality: Marriage as a Function of Ideological State Apparatuses
• Lacey Brown, University of West Florida, Chair: Panel: Trayvon Martin and COMMunity: Exploring the Interpretive Frames of the “Stand Your Ground” Law in Shaping 21st Century American Communities
• Kathryn A. Cady and Kerith M. Woodyard, Northern Illinois University: All the Working Woman’s Friends: Protective Labor Legislation and the Early ERA Controversy
• Peter Odell Campbell, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: The Abject of Community: The Majoritarian ‘Fourth Persona’ in U.S. Equality Rhetoric
• Kelly Carr, University of Baltimore: Inventing Continuity While Enacting Change: The Supreme Court Opinion Writing Process
• Michael S. Chouinard, Florida State University: Judge or Activist? Vaughn Walker and the Overturning of Proposition 8
• Hayley Jeanne Cole, Univ of Missouri, Columbia: Same Sex Marriage Ads: Don’t Mention It: A Content Analysis of the No on Prop 8 Ads
• Josh Compton and Paul Klaas, Dartmouth College: Oh, the Places Legal Rhetoric can Go: Prosecuting and Defending Characters of Dr. Seuss’s Bartholomew and the Oobleck
• Christopher R. Darr, Indiana Univ, Kokomo, and Harry C. Strine IV, Bloomsburg University: Partisanship, Ideology and Advice and Consent: A Content Analysis of Incivility in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings
• Daniel Emery, University of Oklahoma: Property Crimes: Castle Laws, the 2008 Mortgage Crisis, and Privatization of Public Space
• Jerri Faris, Purdue University: Celebrating COMMunity with Ex-prisoners: Engaged Communication Scholarship in a Reentry Court
• Ryan P. Fuller, Univ of California, Santa Barbara: Agenda Denial Strategies in Regulating Vertical Integration: The Case of California SB 1765
• Joshua Gonzalez, University of Iowa: Undignified: Poverty and Personhood in the 1996 Welfare Reform Debates
• Nichola Gutgold, Penn State Univ, Lehigh Valley: The Enactment Rhetoric of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Leslie J. Harris, Univ of Wisconsin, Milwaukee: Spousal Correction or Spousal Cruelty? The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Domestic Violence
• Amy Hasinoff, McGill University: Social Media and Sexuality: The Missing Discourse of Consent in New Sexting Legislation
• Erik Jimenez, California State University, Los Angeles: Are You a Mexican? Investigating the Devastating Implications of Alabama’s Hammon-Beason (HB) 56
• Katherine R. Knobloch, University of Washington, and John W. Gastil, Penn State University: Civic (Re)Socialization: The Educative Effects of Deliberative Participation
• Jeff Kurr, Baylor University: President Obama’s Rhetorical Pivot in Avoiding the Detainment of Deliberation over Closing the Detention Facilities at Guantanamo Bay
• Derek Lackaff, Elon University: Open Governance Experiments in the Icelandic Context
• Owen H. Lynch, Southern Methodist University: Lowering the Bar or the Important Role of Humor in The Legal Community
• Carol L. Mammel, University of the Fraser Valley: The Osoyoos Indian Band, Canadian Wildlife Service, and the Species at Risk Act: Lack of consultation, and perpetuation of underdevelopment on reserves
• Bryan J. McCann, Wayne State Univ: Between Thugs and Innocents: Racialized Violence and the Perogative of ‘Self Defense’ in the Trayvon Martin Case
• Robert Mills, Northwestern University: The Harmonious Vocalics of Judicial Unanimity: Authorship and Legitimacy in Cooper v. Aaron
• Jay Reynolds Patterson, Georgia State University: Contemporary Legal Discourse and the Graeco-Roman Tradition: The 2009 OJ Simpson Kidnapping Trial
• Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University: Constructing Modern-day U.S. Legal Education through Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, and the Scholar Model of the Law Professor Persona
• Preconference: Reading the Rhetoric of Civil Rights Sit-Ins
• Alessandra Renzi, Ryerson University: Get Out of My Park: Occupying Discourse on Public Use
• Robert Richards, Penn State University: Legal Narrative in the Citizens’ Panel: Identifying Theories to Explain Storytelling in a Small Group Deliberation about Ballot Initiatives
• Brandi Dale Rogers, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Science, Law, and the Argumentative Antecedents of Fetal Personhood: A Rhetorical Analysis of Early Prenatal Torts
• Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama, Huntsville: Reversing Course: Supreme Court Overruling in an Early Admiralty Case
• Clariza Ruiz De Castilla, University of Texas, Austin: Citizenship in the Sunshine State: Florida News Coverage on Arizona’s SB 1070
• Kristina Ruiz-Mesa, Univ of Colorado, Boulder: COMMunities of Practice and Discourses of a DREAM: How Congress and Fox News Represent ‘Others’ within the DREAM Act
• Susan H. Sarapin, Troy University: Forget about It! The Ironic Effects of Instructions to Disregard Perry, Ben, Gil, and Ducky
• Susan H. Sarapin, Troy University: Toward a Causal Explanation of ‘The CSI Effect’: Self-efficacy as Mediator between Fictional Crime-TV Exposure and Verdict Certainty
• Joseph Sery, University of San Francisco: ‘Fruit from the Poisonous Tree’: The Rhetorical Strategy behind Mapp v. Ohio
• Rohini Singh, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Turning the Tables: Refutation by Reversal in Clarence Darrow’s Plea for Leopold and Loeb
• Jeff Swift, North Carolina State University: The Invisible Hand of the Speech Marketplace: The Supreme Court’s Currency Manipulation
• Elycia M. Taylor, Catherine Knight Steele, and Emilie Lucchesi, University of Illinois, Chicago: Protective or Oppressive? Analyzing Death Penalty Framing
• Dave Tell, University of Kansas, and Eric C. Miller, Penn State University: Rhetoric and Judicial Activism: The Case of Hillary Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
• Mary Lynn L. Veden, Univ of Arkansas, Fayetteville: The Alchemy and Antirrhetic of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish
• Rachel Avon A. Whidden, Lake Forest College: Proving Science in Court: Vaccine Injury Payouts and the Legitimization of the MMR-Autism Connection

Archer on Evaluating Experts: Understanding Citizen Assessments of Technical Discourse in a Public Deliberation About Ballot Initiatives

Lauren Archer of the University of Washington Department of Communication presented a paper entitled Evaluating experts: Understanding citizen assessments of technical discourse at GPSSA 2012: Conference of the Great Plains Society for the Study of Argumentation, held June 1-2, 2012 at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA.

Here is the abstract:

Rhetorical analysis of Oregon’s 2010 Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) [see descriptions here and here] transcripts provides insight into understanding how citizens evaluate the rhetoric of experts as well as how they process technical discourses. The CIR demonstrates the potential of a Deweyian model of expertise — where experts inform and citizens deliberate — for improving expert-citizen interactions.

Legal Communication Papers at RSA 2012: Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference

The legal communication papers (that I’ve been able to identify) being presented at RSA 2012: The 15th Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, being held 25-28 May 2012, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, are listed below.

Click here for the conference program.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #rsa12.

The legal communication / legal rhetoric papers being presented at the conference include the following (if you know of other legal communication papers being presented at the conference, please feel free to list them in the comments):

• Jennifer Andrus, University of Utah, and Nathan Atkinson, Georgia State University: Photographs, Witnesses and Bodies: Toward a Visual Rhetoric of Law
• Joseph Bartolotta, University of Minnesota: Indulging John Marshall’s “Sympathies”: Identification, the Cherokee Nation, and the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia
• Shelby Bell, University of Minnesota: The Presidency as a Tool for Foreign Policy: An Exploration of the Implications of United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp
• Jonathan Benda, Northeastern University: Formosa Betrayed and Its Fate(s): Rhetorical Ecologies and the Reframing of Human Rights Rhetoric
• Frank M. Bryan, University of Vermont: Face-to-face Democratic Deliberation: The Role of Rhetoric in Communal Assemblies
• Peter Odell Campbell, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Queer Phronesis in Constitutional Argument
• Alan Chu, University of Arizona: Legislative New Racism and the Rhetoric of Ethnic Studies in Arizona
• Emily Cooney, Arizona State University: Keeping the Targets Out: Representation and Social Justice in the Arizona SB 1070 Debate
• Mark Davis, Texas Tech University: The U.S. Constitution and Human Rights: A Rhetorical Look at How the Constitution Is Used as a Weapon by Political and Corporate Interests to Deny Human Rights Concerns to Non-citizens Across the Globe
• Matthew deTar, Northwestern University: The Limits of Religious Rights Discourse: The EU in Domestic Turkish Politics
• Rasha Diab, University of Texas: Revisiting the Constitution of Medina: A Medieval, Arab-Islamic Articulation of Conciliation and Human Rights
• Adam Ellwanger, University of Houston-Downtown: Our “Big, Messy Tough Democracy”: Healthcare Reform and the Failure of Rhetoric
• Megan Foley, Mississippi State University: Logos and Aristotelian Justice: Dikē from Aporia to Analogy
• Michaela Frischherz, The University of Iowa: Not Gay Enough: Performing Identifications in U.S. Asylum Law
• John Gastil, Penn State University; Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; Robert Richards, Penn State University: Vicarious Deliberation: How the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review Influences Deliberation in Mass Elections
• Mary Glavin, Carnegie Mellon University: Free Appropriate Public Education: Anxiety of Agency in Special Education Law
• Jeremiah Hickey, St. John’s University: In Defense of “Breathing Space:” The Structure of Political Debate in Snyder v. Phelps
• Van Hillard, Davidson College: Definitional Anxieties over Protecting Marriage: Kategoria as Civic Violence
• Karen S. Hoffman, Marquette University: Listening to the People: the Contribution of Online Comment Forums
• Jaclyn Howell, University of Kansas: When Communism and Jim Crow Collide: Harry Raymond and the Case of Willie McGee
• Kristen Hungerford, University of Memphis: Obama Doesn’t Like To ‘Tell’: A Rhetoric of Ambiguity in President Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Signing Address
• James Jasinski, University of Puget Sound: Reconstituting a Prudential Middle Ground Regarding Racial Classifications: From Bakke to Parents United
• Helen Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Rhetorical Construction of Gender in Marriage Cases
• Emiliano Marello, Universidad de Buenos Aires: The Rhetoric of the Possibility of Lesbian Love: Argumentative Aspects of the Legal Struggle of Lesbian Mothers in Argentina
• Jonathan Maricle, University of South Carolina: Accountable Deliberation: The Public’s Role in Healthcare Reform
• Sara McKinnon, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Dividing Definitions of Gender/Sexuality and the Implications for Lesbian Asylum Seekers in the United States
• Paul Minifee, San Diego State University : Rhetoric of Agitation: Rev. Jermain W. Loguen’s Speech in Defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
• William Morgan, New York University: Commodiousness, Concern, and the Uses of Repetitive Questioning in Human Rights Rhetoric
• Christa B. Teston, University of Idaho: Defining “clinical meaningfulness” in FDA cancer-care hearings
• Belinda Walzer, University of North Carolina-Greensboro: What Are The Alternatives? Human Rights, Subjectivity and the Potential of Narrative
• Maggie Werner, Hobart & William: Heroes v. Haters: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Masquerade of Justice
• Karen Wink, U.S. Coast Guard Academy: Deliberative Discourse Surrounding the Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

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

Legal Informatics / Legal Communication Papers @ ICA 2012

The following legal informatics or legal communication papers are being presented at ICA 2012: The Conference of the International Communication Association, being held 24-28 May 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. (Click here for the full conference program. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #ica12. If you know of other legal communication or legal informatics papers presented at the conference, please feel free to mention them in the comments):

• Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, U of Tampere: The Effects of Relational Tensions on Optimal Listening in Legal Communication Relationships
• Cheryl Ann Bishop, Quinnipiac U: Access to Information in the European Court of Human Rights
• Laura W. Black and Anna Marie Wiederhold, Ohio U: “I Agree With All of That, But…” Examining Expressions of Difference in Citizen Discussion Groups
• Emily A. Dolan, Syracuse U: Exploring Privacy on Online Social Networks in Civil Cases
• Dmitry Epstein, Cornell U; Rebecca B. Vernon, Cornell eRulemaking Initiative: Not by Technology Alone: The “Analog” Aspects of Online Public Engagement in Rulemaking
• Jessica Fridy and Karen Tracy, U of Colorado: Majority Rule or a Minority Right? Discursive Orientations Toward Democratic Ideals in a U.S. Public Hearing
• Howard Giles, Douglas Bonilla, Daniel Linz, and Michelle L. Gomez,U of California, Santa Barbara: Police Stops of and Interactions With Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation
• Jeffrey A. Gottfried, U of Pennsylvania, Eran N. Ben-Porath, Social Science Research Solutions, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, U of Pennsylvania: Do Judges Perceive Value in Voter Guides for Judicial Elections?
• Karina Horsti, New York U; Saara Pellander, U of Helsinki: Family in Migration Debates: Polarised Discourses in Finnish Media and Parliament
• Robert Huesca, Trinity U; Roopali Mukherjee, CUNY – Queens College; Eren McGinnis, Dos Vatos Productions: Precious Knowledge: A Film and Discussion
• Shazia Iftkhar, U of Michigan: “The Republic is Lived With the Face Uncovered”: Framing the Legal Ban on the ‘Burqa’ in France
• Oyvind Ihlen and Kjersti Thorbjornsrud, U of Oslo: Tears vs. Rules and Regulations: Media Strategies and Framing of Immigration Issues
• Melissa A. Johnson, North Carolina State U: Battleground Arizona: Visual Fidelity in Network News Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law
• Michael K Park, U of Southern California: Juror Misconduct 2.0: The Right to an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Networking
• Jennifer M. Proffitt and Margot A. Susca, Florida State U: Follow the Money: The Entertainment Software Association Attack on Video Game Regulation
• Ryan Rogers, U of North Carolina: The Violence of a Generation: Supreme Court Ruling on Regulating Violent Video Games for Minors
• Leah Sprain, Colorado State U: Speaking as “Experts” and “Citizens” in Public Meetings
• T.T. Sreekumar and Shobha Vadrevu, National U of Singapore: “If I Can, I Legislate. If I Can’t, I Gazette”: Political Twitterati and Democracy in Singapore
• Inger Lisbeth Stole, U of Illinois: The 1930s: Consumers Reactions to Advertising and Demands for Federal Regulation
• Chad Tew and Amy Jorgensen, U of Southern Indiana: Accused and Confused: An Analysis of YouTube Reaction Videos to Copyright Violations
• Mercedes Vigon, Florida International U: Not Business as Usual: Spanish–Language TV Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law, April-May 2010

For full text of papers, please contact the authors.

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.

Legal Communication Papers @ NCA 2011

Many papers on legal communication were presented at NCA 11: The 97th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, held November 17-20, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Here is a list of those I could identify. For abstracts and full text, please contact the authors. (If you know of other papers on legal communication presented at NCA 2011, please feel free to identify them in the comments to this post. Click here for the complete NCA 2011 program.)

• Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, University of Tampere: Professional Communication in Courtrooms: American and Finnish Listening Concepts.
• Brita Anderson, University of Pittsburgh: The Law: Rhetorically Constructed, Aesthetic, and Sublime.
• Jennifer Biedendorf, Penn State University: The Ratification Debate over the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Communicating International Law.
• Peter Odell Campbell, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: The Procedural Queer: Substantive Due Process, Lawrence v. Texas, and Queer Rhetorical Futures.
• Jane Elmes-Crahall, Wilkes University; Mark Congdon Jr., University of North Carolina, Greensboro: Words Do Matter: A Diachronic Analysis of Judicial, Legislative and Advocacy Rhetoric on Behalf of Public Support for Children with Disabilities.
• James Farrell, University of New Hampshire: Daniel Webster for the Prosecution: The Moral Drama of the Salem Murder Trial.
• John W. Gastil, Penn State University; Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; Justin Reedy, University of Washington; Mark Henkels, Western Oregon University; Katherine Cramer Walsh, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Hearing a Public Voice in Micro-Level Deliberation and Macro-Level Politics: Assessing the Impact of the Citizens’ Initiative Review on the Oregon Electorate.
• Ian E. Hill, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: ‘Preaching Dynamite’: Ironic Metaphor at the Haymarket Trial.
• Erica Hollander, Metropolitan State College of Denver: Teaching Debate from a Courtroom Orientation.
• Michael E. Holmes, Ball State University: Negotiating ‘Best Interest:’ The Voice of the Advocate in the Foster Care System.
• Sharon E. Jarvis, Univ of Texas, Austin; Clariza Ruiz De Castilla, Univ of Texas, Austin: Are Latinos Citizens? Voice Given to Labels and Rights in Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Reform Legislation.
• James Jasinski, Univ of Puget Sound; Dustin Buehler, University of Arkansas, Fayette; Catherine Langford, Texas Tech Univ; Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University; Mary Lynn L. Veden; Univ of Arkansas, Fayetteville: Dissonant Voices, Democratice Choices: The Rhetoric of Apportionment in Baker v. Carr.
• Jason Jordan, University of North Texas: De Jure Blackness: Racialization in Brown v. Board of Education.
• Amber Kelsie, Univ of Pittsburgh: Speaking For Others: The Post-Feminist, Post-Racial Politics of Anti-Abortion Legislation.
• Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; John W. Gastil, Penn State University; Justin Reedy, University of Washington; Katherine Cramer Walsh, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Did They Deliberate? Applying a Theoretical Model of Democratic Deliberation to the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review.
• Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; Rory Raabe, University of Washington: Exploring the Effects of Deliberative Participation through Panelist Self-Reports.
• Michael R. Kramer, Saint Mary’s College: The Utility of Law-Related Examples in Communication Education.
• William Lewis, Drake University (Chair): Voices In, Of, and Against “The Law”: Roundtable on Alternative Pedagogies for Teaching Legal Communication as Other than Professional Preparation.
• Nneka Logan, Georgia State University: Corporate Speech Rights and Neoliberalism: An Analysis of Supreme Court Discourse as Constitutive Rhetoric.
• Stephen H. Macek, North Central College: The Chicago Media, the Labor Movement and the Struggle over Taft-Hartley.
• Sara L. McKinnon, Univ of Wisconsin, Madison: Geopolitics and Human Rights Rhetoric in Recent Mexican LGBT Asylum Cases in the United States.
• Nick Merola, Univ of Texas, Austin; Vysali Soundararajan, University of Texas, Austin: Interrupting Justice: Interruptions in Supreme Court Proceedings.
• Eric C. Miller, Penn State University: From Dayton to Dover: The Rhetorical Evolution of American Anti-Evolutionism.
• Ashley R. Muddiman, Univ of Texas, Austin: Hear Our Voice! Incivility(?) in the 2009 Health Care Protests.
• Jeffrey A. Nelson, Kent State University: The Connecticut Supreme Court Decision on Same-Sex Marriage: A Departure From Disgust.
• Elizabeth A. Petre, Southern Illinois Univ, Carbondale; James T. Petre, Southern Illinois Univ, Carbondale: ‘There Are Certain Things Only a Government Can Do’: Obama’s Rhetorical ‘Voice’ about the Role of Government in Food Regulation.
• Stephen E. Rahko, Indiana University: Citizens United and its Discontents or Musings on a Rhetoric of Corporate Law.
• Susan H. Sarapin, Purdue University, Emily Haas, Purdue University, Scott McWilliams PhD, Jurinex Legal Services, Rahul Mitra, Purdue University, Melanie Morgan, Purdue University: Optimizing Voices from the Witness Box: The Effects of Physician-Defendant Testimony on Findings of Nurse-Defendant Negligence in Medical Malpractice.
• Jennifer Scarduzio, Arizona State University; Sarah J. Tracy, Arizona State University: Paradoxes, Dirty Work, and Intermediary Emotional Labor: The Emotional Work of Female Judges, Bailiffs, and Clerks.
• Susan A. Sci, Regis University: Between French and Islamic Law: Cennet Doganay’s Embodied Argument and le Loi 2004-228.
• Joseph Sery, Univ of Pittsburgh: Cultivating Virtue: Rhetoric, Stoic Law, and the Good Community.
• Lindsey Shook, University of Kansas: Inventing Bracton: Questioning the Medieval Concept of Invention in Law and its Relation to ‘Voice’ in Modern Rape Myths through the Bracton Legal Treatise.
• Kami J. Silk, Michigan State University; Samantha Nazione, Michigan State University; Lindsay Neuberger, University of Central Florida; Sandi W. Smith, Michigan State University; Charles K. Atkin, Michigan State University: The Role of Involvement, Scientific Literacy, Education, and Message Format in Influencing the Lay Public’s Regulatory Attitude about PFOA Exposure.
• John M. Sloop, Vanderbilt University: Gender Laws: Caster Semenya and the Third World War.
• James Smith, Univ of Missouri, Columbia: Political Blogs and the Permanent Campaign: A Functional Analysis of the Health Care Debate.
• Zack Stiegler, Indiana Univ of Pennsylvania; Dan Sprumont, Indiana University of Pennyslvania: Mediated Voices: Framing the Net Neutrality Debate.
• Matthew Thornton, Louisiana State University: The Case of Corrupted Coverage – Press Coverage and Framing Effects of the Citizens United Decision.
• Robert N. Yale, Purdue University: The Influence of Narrative Believability on Juror Verdicts and Verdict Confidence: A Test of the Narrative Believability Scale (NBS-22).

Abstracts for Papers Presented at Current Legal Issues Colloquium 2011: Law and Language

Abstracts have been posted for the papers presented at Current Legal Issues Colloquium 2011 – Law and Language, held 4-5 July 2011 at University College London Faculty of Laws. The papers concern a range of current issues in the fields of linguistics, text analysis, rhetoric, and textual interpretation, all as applied to legal texts.

Calls for Papers: Workshops @ ICAIL 2011

Calls for papers, with diverse submission deadlines, have been issued for the workshops at ICAIL 2011: The International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law; the workshops are scheduled to be held 6 and 10 June 2011, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

DESI IV: Workshop on Setting Standards for Searching Electronically Stored Information in Discovery Proceedings, 6 June 2011. Deadlines:

• 1 April 2011: Research papers;
• 22 April 2011: Position papers.

Workshop on Agent Model-Based Reasoning in Law, 6 June 2011. Deadline:

• 14 March 2011.

Computational Law: A Bridge Towards the Business Rules, 6 June 2011. Deadline:

• 20 April 2011.

AI & Evidential Inference, 10 June 2011. Deadline:

• TBA

AHLTL 2011: Applying Human Language Technology to the Law, 10 June 2011. Deadline:

• 31 March 2011.

Coherence 2011: Artificial Intelligence, Coherence, and Judicial Reasoning, 10 June 2011. Deadlines:

• 15 April 2011: Abstracts;
• 3 June 2011: Full papers.

HT JURIX.