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

Bench-Capon et al.: A History of AI and Law in 50 Papers: 25 Years of ICAIL

Professor Dr. Trevor Bench-Capon the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science, and colleagues, have published A history of AI and Law in 50 papers: 25 years of the international conference on AI and Law, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here is the abstract:

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go.

Three of Adam Wyner‘s contributions to this issue are linked from the post: Wyner on Logic Programming, Case Law Knowledge Bases, and Legal Case-Based Reasoning and Information Retrieval.

Call for Papers: ICAIL 2013: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law

A call for papers — with paper submission deadline of 18 January 2013 — has been issued for ICAIL 2013: 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, to be held 10-14 June 2013 in Rome, Italy.

The Twitter account for the conference is @ICAIL2013 . The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #ICAIL2013. The conference organizers invite those interested to follow the Twitter account and hashtag and to comment and contribute with the latest news.

The conference features two tracks: one for “regular papers” and one for “innovative applications papers.”

Here is the complete list of deadlines:

• Mentoring program request deadline: November 9, 2012
• Mentoring program paper deadline: November 16, 2012
• Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 7, 2012
• Submission of abstracts (optional): January 11, 2013
• Submission of papers deadline: January 18, 2013
• Notification of acceptance: March 20, 2013
• Final revised and formatted papers due: April 19, 2013
• Conference: June 10 – June 14, 2013

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• Formal and computational models of legal reasoning
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing and data mining
• Computational models of argumentation and decision making
• Legal knowledge representation including legal ontologies and common sense knowledge
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Machine learning and data mining applied to legal databases
• Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
• E-discovery and e-disclosure
• E-government and e-justice
• Computational models of evidential reasoning
• Modeling norms for multi-agent systems
• Modeling negotiation and contract formation
• Computational models of case-based legal reasoning
• Online dispute resolution
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for the legal domain
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Anne Gardner

[NOTE: Updated 23 November 2012 to add the Twitter account and hashtag. HT Enrico Francesconi]

Wyner on Logic Programming, Case Law Knowledge Bases, and Legal Case-Based Reasoning and Information Retrieval

Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science has posted comments on three papers presented at the first ICAIL conference, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (1987). These comments are to be published in a forthcoming special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here are links to the comments:

• Adam Wyner: Comment on Trevor Bench-Capon et al. (1987). Logic programming for large scale applications in law: A formalisation of supplementary benefit legislation.
• Adam Wyner: Comment on Carole Hafner. (1987). Conceptual organization of case law knowledge bases.
• Adam Wyner: Comment on Edwina Rissland and Jody Daniels. (1987). A hybrid CBR-IR approach to legal information retrieval.

Horty and Bench-Capon on A Factor-based Definition of Precedential Constraint

Professor Dr. John F. Horty of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and Professor Dr. Trevor J. M. Bench-Capon of the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science, have published A factor-based definition of precedential constraint, Artificial Intelligence and Law, 20, 181-214.

Here is the abstract:

This paper describes one way in which a precise reason model of precedent could be developed, based on the general idea that courts are constrained to reach a decision that is consistent with the assessment of the balance of reasons made in relevant earlier decisions. The account provided here has the additional advantage of showing how this reason model can be reconciled with the traditional idea that precedential constraint involves rules, as long as these rules are taken to be defeasible. The account presented is firmly based on a body of work that has emerged in AI and Law. This work is discussed, and there is a particular discussion of approaches based on theory construction, and how that work relates to the model described in this paper.

Franklin: How Much of Legal Reasoning Is Formalizable?

Professor Dr. James Franklin of the University of New South Wales School of Mathematics and Statistics, has published Discussion paper: how much of commonsense and legal reasoning is formalizable? A review of conceptual obstacles, forthcoming in Law, Probability, and Risk.

Here is the abstract:

Fifty years of effort in artificial intelligence (AI) and the formalization of legal reasoning have produced both successes and failures. Considerable success in organizing and displaying evidence and its interrelationships has been accompanied by failure to achieve the original ambition of AI as applied to law: fully automated legal decision-making. The obstacles to formalizing legal reasoning have proved to be the same ones that make the formalization of commonsense reasoning so difficult, and are most evident where legal reasoning has to meld with the vast web of ordinary human knowledge of the world. Underlying many of the problems is the mismatch between the discreteness of symbol manipulation and the continuous nature of imprecise natural language, of degrees of similarity and analogy, and of probabilities.

HT Peter Tillers.

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.

Wyner on Problems and Prospects in the Automatic Semantic Analysis of Legal Texts

Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science has published Problems and Prospects in the Automatic Semantic Analysis of Legal Texts, in LREC 2012 Conference Proceedings: Semantic Processing of Legal Texts (SPLeT-2012) Workshop, pp. 39-41.

Here is the abstract:

Legislation and regulations are expressed in natural language. Machine-readable forms of the texts may be represented as linked documents, semantically tagged text, or translation to a logic. The paper considers the latter form, which is key to testing consistency of laws, drawing inferences, and providing explanations relative to input. To translate laws to a machine-readable logic, sentences must be parsed and semantically translated. Manual translation is time and labour intensive, usually involving narrowly scoping the rules. While automated translation systems have made significant progress, problems remain. The paper outlines systems to automatically translate legislative clauses to a semantic representation, highlighting key problems and proposing some tasks to address them.

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.

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.