We present a formal, mathematical model of argument structure and evaluation, taking seriously the procedural and dialogical aspects of argumentation. The model applies proof standards to determine the acceptability of statements on an issue-by-issue basis. The model uses different types of premises (ordinary premises, assumptions and exceptions) and information about the dialectical status of statements (stated, questioned, accepted or rejected) to allow the burden of proof to be allocated to the proponent or the respondent, as appropriate, for each premise separately. (...) Our approach allows the burden of proof for a premise to be assigned to a different party than the one who has the burden of proving the conclusion of the argument, and also to change the burden of proof or applicable proof standard as the dialogue progresses from stage to stage. Useful for modeling legal dialogues, the burden of production and burden of persuasion can be handled separately, with a different responsible party and applicable proof standard for each. Carneades enables critical questions of argumentation schemes to be modeled as additional premises, using premise types to capture the varying effect on the burden of proof of different kinds of questions. (shrink)

Inspired by legal reasoning, this paper presents a formal framework for assessing conflicting arguments. Its use is illustrated with applications to realistic legal examples, and the potential for implementation is discussed. The framework has the form of a logical system for defeasible argumentation. Its language, which is of a logic-programming-like nature, has both weak and explicit negation, and conflicts between arguments are decided with the help of priorities on the rules. An important feature of the system is that these priorities (...) are not fixed, but are themselves defeasibly derived as conclusions within the system. Thus debates on the choice between conflicting arguments can also be modelled.The proof theory of the system is stated in dialectical style, where a proof takes the form of a dialogue between a proponent and an opponent of an argument. An argument is shown to be justified if the proponent can make the opponent run out of moves in whatever way the opponent attacks. Despite this dialectical form, the system reflects a declarative, or relational approach to modelling legal argument. A basic assumption of this paper is that this approach complements two other lines of research in AI and Law, investigations of precedent-based reasoning and the development of procedural, or dialectical models of legal argument. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine of (...) the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the impact that Walton’s conception of argumentation schemes had on AI and Law research. We will discuss developments in argumentation in AI and Law before Walton’s schemes became known in that community, and the issues that were current in that work. We will then show how Walton’s schemes provided a means of addressing all of those issues, and so supplied a unifying perspective from which to view argumentation in AI and Law.

This paper is an introduction to a virtual special issue of AI and Law exploring the legacy of the influential HYPO system of Rissland and Ashley. The papers included are: Arguments and cases: An inevitable intertwining, BankXX: Supporting legal arguments through heuristic retrieval, Modelling reasoning with precedents in a formal dialogue Game, A note on dimensions and factors, An empirical investigation of reasoning with legal cases through theory construction and application, Automatically classifying case texts and predicting outcomes, A factor-based definition (...) of precedential constraint and An improved factor based approach to precedential constraint. After describing HYPO, in this introduction to the special issue I look at various aspects of its influence on AI and Law: the developments led by Rissland at Amherst; the developments led by Ashley in Pittsburgh; the expression of these ideas in terms of rule based systems, and their subsequent formalisation; value based theories, which were inspired by a critique of HYPO; and contemporary approaches which revive the idea of dimensions. (shrink)

We discuss five kinds of representations of rationales and provide a formal account of how they can alter disputation. The formal model of disputation is derived from recent work in argument. The five kinds of rationales are compilation rationales, which can be represented without assuming domain-knowledge (such as utilities) beyond that normally required for argument. The principal thesis is that such rationales can be analyzed in a framework of argument not too different from what AI already has. The result is (...) a formal understanding of rationales, a partial taxonomy, and a foundation for computer programs that represent and reason with rationales.The five kinds of rationales are as follows: (c)ompression and (s)pecialization, which yield rules, and (d)isputation, which yields a decision. These are modeled as potentially changing the focus of the dispute. Then there are (f)it, a rationale for rules, and (r)esolution, a rationale for decisions. These cannot be modeled as simply; they force disputation to a meta-level, at least temporarily. (shrink)

In The Uses of Argument, Stephen Toulmin proposed a model for the layout of arguments: claim, data, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, backing. Since then, Toulmin’s model has been appropriated, adapted and extended by researchers in speech communications, philosophy and artificial intelligence. This book assembles the best contemporary reflection in these fields, extending or challenging Toulmin’s ideas in ways that make fresh contributions to the theory of analysing and evaluating arguments.

This paper reviews the history of AI & Law research from the perspective of argument schemes. It starts with the observation that logic, although very well applicable to legal reasoning when there is uncertainty, vagueness and disagreement, is too abstract to give a fully satisfactory classification of legal argument types. It therefore needs to be supplemented with an argument-scheme approach, which classifies arguments not according to their logical form but according to their content, in particular, according to the roles that (...) the various elements of an argument can play. This approach is then applied to legal reasoning, to identify some of the main legal argument schemes. It is also argued that much AI & Law research in fact employs the argument-scheme approach, although it usually is not presented as such. Finally, it is argued that the argument-scheme approach and the way it has been employed in AI & Law respects some of the main lessons to be learnt from Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument. (shrink)

The first issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law journal was published in 1992. This paper provides commentaries on nine significant papers drawn from the Journal’s second decade. Four of the papers relate to reasoning with legal cases, introducing contextual considerations, predicting outcomes on the basis of natural language descriptions of the cases, comparing different ways of representing cases, and formalising precedential reasoning. One introduces a method of analysing arguments that was to become very widely used in AI and Law, namely (...) argumentation schemes. Two relate to ontologies for the representation of legal concepts and two take advantage of the increasing availability of legal corpora in this decade, to automate document summarisation and for the mining of arguments. (shrink)

This paper describes a model of legal reasoning and a logic for reasoning with rules, principles and goals that is especially suited to this model of legal reasoning. The paper consists of three parts. The first part describes a model of legal reasoning based on a two-layered view of the law. The first layer consists of principles and goals that express fundamental ideas of a legal system. The second layer contains legal rules which in a sense summarise the outcome of (...) the interaction of the principles and goals for a number of case types. Both principles, goals and rules can be used in legal arguments, but their logical roles are different. One characteristic of the model of legal reasoning described in the first part of the paper is that it takes these logical differences into account. Another characteristic is that it pays serious attention to the phenomena of reasoning about the validity and acceptance of rules, respectively principles and goals, and about the application of legal rules, and the implications of these arguments for the use of rules, principles and goals in deriving legal conclusions for concrete cases.The second part of the paper first describes a logic (Reason-Based Logic) that is especially suited to deal with legal arguments as described in terms of the previously discussed model. The facilities of the logic are illustrated by means of examples that correspond to the several aspects of the model. (shrink)

This paper takes up Berman and Hafner's (1993) challenge to model legal case-based reasoning not just in terms of factual similarities and differences but also in terms of the values that are at stake. The formal framework of Prakken and Sartor (1998) is applied to examples of case-based reasoning involving values, and a method for formalising such examples is proposed. The method makes it possible to express that a case should be decided in a certain way because that advances certain (...) values. The method also supports the comparison of conflicting precedents in terms of values, and it supports debates on the relevance of distinctions in terms of values. (shrink)

Doug Walton, who died in January 2020, was a prolific author whose work in informal logic and argumentation had a profound influence on Artificial Intelligence, including Artificial Intelligence and Law. He was also very interested in interdisciplinary work, and a frequent and generous collaborator. In this paper seven leading researchers in AI and Law, all past programme chairs of the International Conference on AI and Law who have worked with him, describe his influence on their work.

The article considers two different interpretations of the reason model of precedent pioneered by John Horty. On a plausible interpretation of the reason model, past cases provide reasons to prioritize reasons favouring the same outcome as a past case over reasons favouring the opposing outcome. Here I consider the merits of this approach to the role of precedent in legal reasoning in comparison with a closely related view favoured by some legal theorists, according to which past cases provide reasons for (...) undercutting (or ‘excluding’) reasons favouring the opposing outcome. After embedding both accounts within a general default logic, I note some important differences between the two approaches that emerge as a result of plausible distinctions between rebutting and undercutting defeat in formal models of legal reasoning. These differences stem from the ‘preference independence’ of undercutting defeat. Undercutting reasons succeed in defeating opposing reasons irrespective of their relative strength. As a result, the two accounts differ in their account of the way in which precedents constrain judicial reasoning. I conclude by suggesting that the two approaches can be integrated within a single model, in which the distinction between undercutting and rebutting defeat is used to account for the distinction between strict and persuasive forms of precedential constraint. (shrink)

This paper proposes to model legal reasoning asdialectical theory-constructiondirected by teleology. Precedents are viewed asevidence to be explained throughtheories. So, given a background of factors andvalues, the parties in a case canbuild their theories by using a set of operators,which are called theory constructors.The objective of each party is to provide theoriesthat both explain the evidence (theprecedents) and support the decision wished by thatparty. This leads to theory-basedargumentation, i.e., a dialectical exchange ofcompeting theories, which support opposedoutcomes by explaining the same (...) evidence and appealingto the same values. The winneris the party that can reply with a more coherent theoryto all theories of its adversary. (shrink)

This article presents a formal dialogue game for adjudication dialogues. Existing AI & law models of legal dialogues and argumentation-theoretic models of persuasion are extended with a neutral third party, to give a more realistic account of the adjudicator’s role in legal procedures. The main feature of the model is a division into an argumentation phase, where the adversaries plea their case and the adjudicator has a largely mediating role, and a decision phase, where the adjudicator decides the dispute on (...) the basis of the claims, arguments and evidence put forward in the argumentation phase. The model allows for explicit decisions on admissibility of evidence and burden of proof by the adjudicator in the argumentation phase. Adjudication is modelled as putting forward arguments, in particular undercutting and priority arguments, in the decision phase. The model reconciles logical aspects of burden of proof induced by the defeasible nature of arguments with dialogical aspects of burden of proof as something that can be allocated by explicit decisions on legal grounds. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a method for the specification of computationalmodels of argument using dialogue games. The method, which consists ofsupplying a set of semantic definitions for the performatives making upthe game, together with a state transition diagram, is described in full.Its use is illustrated by some examples of varying complexity, includingtwo complete specifications of particular dialogue games, Mackenzie's DC,and the authors' own TDG. The latter is also illustrated by a fully workedexample illustrating all the features of the game.

In this chapter, we begin by sketching in the broadest possible strokes the ideas behind two formal systems that have been introduced with to goal of explicating the ways in which reasons interact to support the actions and conclusions they do. The first of these is the theory of defeasible reasoning developed in the seminal work of Pollock; the second is a more recent theory due to Horty, which adapts and develops the default logic introduced by Reiter to provide an (...) account of reasons. However, the implementations are complex enough, in both cases, to prevent anything more than this sketch. And we would not want to give the impression that we think that work on the logic of reasons must follow the path mapped out in either of these theories—indeed, we feel that the field is wide open. In the remainder of the chapter, therefore, will concentrate on a number of issues bearing on the logic of reasons that are either not treated in the work of Pollock and Horty, or whose treatment there is, we feel, either inadequate or incomplete. These are: first, the question of whether it is necessary to understand logical interactions among reasons themselves, rather than simply between reasons and the actions or conclusions they support, and if so, what principles might govern these interactions; second, priority relations among reasons and the notion of reason accrual; and third, some problems posed by undercutting defeat. (shrink)

Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks have had a very significant role in the rise in interest in argumentation throughout this century. In this paper we will explore the impact of this seminal idea on a specific application domain, AI and Law. Argumentation is central to legal reasoning and there had been a considerable amount of work on it in AI and Law before Dung’s paper. It had, however, been rather fragmented. We argue that the abstract argumentation frameworks had a unifying effect (...) by offering a means of relating previously diverse work. We also discuss how the particular demands of legal systems have led to developments building on the basic notions of abstract argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

Few automated legal reasoning systems have been developed in domains of law in which a judicial decision maker has extensive discretion in the exercise of his or her powers. Discretionary domains challenge existing artificial intelligence paradigms because models of judicial reasoning are difficult, if not impossible to specify. We argue that judicial discretion adds to the characterisation of law as open textured in a way which has not been addressed by artificial intelligence and law researchers in depth. We demonstrate that (...) systems for reasoning with this form of open texture can be built by integrating rule sets with neural networks trained with data collected from standard past cases. The obstacles to this approach include difficulties in generating explanations once conclusions have been inferred, difficulties associated with the collection of sufficient data from past cases and difficulties associated with integrating two vastly different paradigms. A knowledge representation scheme based on the structure of arguments proposed by Toulmin has been used to overcome these obstacles. The system, known as Split Up, predicts judicial decisions in property proceedings within family law in Australia. Predictions from the system have been compared to those from a group of lawyers with favourable results. (shrink)

In this article the argumentation structure of the court’s decision in the Popov v. Hayashi case is formalised in Prakken’s (Argument Comput 1:93–124; 2010) abstract framework for argument-based inference with structured arguments. In this framework, arguments are inference trees formed by applying two kinds of inference rules, strict and defeasible rules. Arguments can be attacked in three ways: attacking a premise, attacking a conclusion and attacking an inference. To resolve such conflicts, preferences may be used, which leads to three corresponding (...) kinds of defeat, after which Dung’s (Artif Intell 77:321–357; 1995) abstract acceptability semantics can be used to evaluate the arguments. In the present paper the abstract framework is instantiated with strict inference rules corresponding to first-order logic and with defeasible inference rules for defeasible modus ponens and various argument schemes. The main techniques used in the formal reconstruction of the case are rule-exception structures and arguments about rule validity. Arguments about socio-legal values and the use of precedent cases are reduced to arguments about rule validity. The tree structure of arguments, with explicit subargument relations between arguments, is used to capture the dependency relations between the elements of the court’s decision. (shrink)

We present a computational model of dialectical argumentation that could serve as a basis for legal reasoning. The legal domain is an instance of a domain in which knowledge is incomplete, uncertain, and inconsistent. Argumentation is well suited for reasoning in such weak theory domains. We model argument both as information structure, i.e., argument units connecting claims with supporting data, and as dialectical process, i.e., an alternating series of moves by opposing sides. Our model includes burden of proof as a (...) key element, indicating what level of support must be achieved by one side to win the argument. Burden of proof acts as move filter, turntaking mechanism, and termination criterion, eventually determining the winner of an argument. Our model has been implemented in a computer program. We demonstrate the model by considering program output for two examples previously discussed in the artificial intelligence and legal reasoning literature. (shrink)

The first issue of _Artificial Intelligence and Law_ journal was published in 1992. This special issue marks the 30th anniversary of the journal by reviewing the progress of the field through thirty commentaries on landmark papers and groups of papers from that journal.

In this paper we describe the impact that Walton’s conception of argumentation schemes had on AI and Law research. We will discuss developments in argumentation in AI and Law before Walton’s schemes became known in that community, and the issues that were current in that work. We will then show how Walton’s schemes provided a means of addressing all of those issues, and so supplied a unifying perspective from which to view argumentation in AI and Law.

Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks have had a very significant role in the rise in interest in argumentation throughout this century. In this paper we will explore the impact of this seminal idea on a specific application domain, AI and Law. Argumentation is central to legal reasoning and there had been a considerable amount of work on it in AI and Law before Dung’s paper. It had, however, been rather fragmented. We argue that the abstract argumentation frameworks had a unifying effect (...) by offering a means of relating previously diverse work. We also discuss how the particular demands of legal systems have led to developments building on the basic notions of abstract argumentation. (shrink)

This article investigates to what extent protocols for dynamicdisputes, i.e., disputes in which the information base can vary at differentstages, can be justified in terms of logics for defeasible argumentation. Firsta general framework is formulated for dialectical proof theories for suchlogics. Then this framework is adapted to serve as a framework for protocols fordynamic disputes, after which soundness and fairness properties are formulated for such protocols relative to dialectical proof theories. It then turns out that certaintypes of protocols that are (...) perfectly fine with a static information base, arenot sound or fair in a dynamic setting. Finally, a natural dynamic protocolis defined for which soundness and fairness can be established. (shrink)

Tailoring assistive systems for guiding and monitoring an individual in daily living activities is a complex task. This paper presents ALI, an assistive system combining a formal possibilistic argumentation system and an informal model of human activity: the Cultural-Historic Activity Theory, facilitating the delivery of tailored advices to a human actor. We follow an activity-centric approach, taking into consideration the human’s motives, goals and prioritized actions. ALI tracks a person in order to I) determine what activities were performed over a (...) period of time (activity recognition tracking), and II) send personalized notifications suggesting the most suitable activities to perform (decision-making monitoring). The ALI system was evaluated in a formative pilot study related to promote social activities and physical exercise. (shrink)

To create a programming environment for contract dispute resolution, we propose an extension of assumption-based argumentation into modular assumption-based argumentation in which different modules of argumentation representing different knowledge bases for reasoning about beliefs and facts and for representation and reasoning with the legal doctrines could be built and assembled together. A distinct novel feature of modular argumentation in compare with other modular logic-based systems like Prolog is that it allows references to different semantics in the same module at the (...) same time, a feature critically important for application of argumentation in legal domains like contract dispute resolution where the outcomes of court cases often depend on whether credulous or skeptical modes of reasoning were applied by the contract parties. We apply the new framework to model the doctrines of contract breach and mutual mistake. (shrink)

Tailoring assistive systems for guiding and monitoring an individual in daily living activities is a complex task. This paper presents ALI, an assistive system combining a formal possibilistic argumentation system and an informal model of human activity: the Cultural-Historic Activity Theory, facilitating the delivery of tailored advices to a human actor. We follow an activity-centric approach, taking into consideration the human’s motives, goals and prioritized actions. ALI tracks a person in order to I) determine what activities were performed over a (...) period of time (activity recognition tracking), and II) send personalized notifications suggesting the most suitable activities to perform (decision-making monitoring). The ALI system was evaluated in a formative pilot study related to promote social activities and physical exercise. (shrink)

The paper provides an OWL ontology for legal cases with an instantiation of the legal case Popov v. Hayashi. The ontology makes explicit the conceptual knowledge of the legal case domain, supports reasoning about the domain, and can be used to annotate the text of cases, which in turn can be used to populate the ontology. A populated ontology is a case base which can be used for information retrieval, information extraction, and case based reasoning. The ontology contains not only (...) elements for indexing the case (e.g. the parties, jurisdiction, and date), but as well elements used to reason to a decision such as argument schemes and the components input to the schemes. We use the Protégé ontology editor and knowledge acquisition system, current guidelines for ontology development, and tools for visual and linguistic presentation of the ontology. (shrink)

We present an argument-based formalism of contract dispute resolution following a modern view that the court would resolve a contract dispute by enforcing an interpretation of contract that reasonably represents the mutual intention of contract parties. Legal doctrines provide principles, rules and guidelines for the court to objectively arrive at such an interpretation. In this paper, we establish the appropriateness of the formalism by applying it to resolve disputes about performance relief with the legal doctrines of impossibility and frustration of (...) purpose in common laws of contract. The formalism is based on modular argumentation, a recently proposed extension of assumption-based argumentation for modelling contract dispute resolution. (shrink)

A well-known ambiguity in the term ‘argument’ is that of argument as an inferential structure and argument as a kind of dialogue. In the first sense, an argument is a structure with a conclusion supported by one or more grounds, which may or may not be supported by further grounds. Rules for the construction and criteria for the quality of arguments in this sense are a matter of logic. In the second sense, arguments have been studied as a form of (...) dialogical interaction, in which human or artificial agents aim to resolve a conflict of opinion by verbal means. Rules for conducting such dialogues and criteria for their quality are part of dialogue theory. Usually, formal accounts of argumentation dialogues in logic and artificial intelligence presuppose an argument-based logic. That is, the ways in which dialogue participants support and attack claims are modelled as the construction of explicit arguments and counterarguments (in the inferential sense). However, in this paper formal models of argumentation dialogues are discussed that do not presuppose arguments as inferential structures. The motivation for such models is that there are forms of inference that are not most naturally cast in the form of arguments (such as abduction, statistical reasoning and coherence-based reasoning) but that can still be the subject of argumentative dialogue. Some recent work in artificial intelligence is discussed which embeds non-argumentative inference in an argumentative dialogue system, and some general observations are drawn from this discussion. (shrink)

Diagnosis theory reasons about incomplete knowledge and only considers the past. It distinguishes between violations and non-violations. Qualitative decision theory reasons about decision variables and considers the future. It distinguishes between fulfilled goals and unfulfilled goals. In this paper we formalize normative diagnoses and decisions in the special purpose formalism DIO(DE)2 as well as in extensions of the preference-based deontic logic PDL. The DIagnostic and DEcision-theoretic framework for DEontic reasoning DIO(DE)2 formalizes reasoning about violations and fulfillments, and is used to (...) characterize the distinction between normative diagnosis theory and (qualitative) decision theory. The extension of the preference-based deontic logic PDL shows how normative diagnostic and decision-theoretic reasoning — i.e. reasoning about violations and fulfillments — can be formalized as an extension of deontic reasoning. (shrink)

Much work on legal knowledge systems treats legal reasoning as arguments that lead from a description of the law and the facts of a case, to the legal conclusion for the case. The reasoning steps of the inference engine parallel the logical steps by means of which the legal conclusion is derived from the factual and legal premises. In short, the relation between the input and the output of a legal inference engine is a logical one. The truth of the (...) conclusion only depends on the premises, and is independent of the argument that leads to the conclusion.This paper opposes the logical approach, and defends a procedural approach to legal reasoning. Legal conclusions are not true or false independent of the reasoning process that ended in these conclusions. In critical cases this reasoning process consists of an adversarial procedure in which several parties are involved. The course of the argument determines whether the conclusion is true or false. The phenomenon of hard cases is used to demonstrate this essential procedural nature of legal reasoning. (shrink)

In this article a dialectical model for practical reasoning within a community, based on the Generic/Actual Argument Model (GAAM) is advanced and its application to deliberative dialogue discussed. The GAAM, offers a dynamic template for structuring knowledge within a domain of discourse that is connected to and regulated by a community. The paper demonstrates how the community accepted generic argument structure acts to normatively influence both admissible reasoning and the progression of dialectical reasoning between participants. It is further demonstrated that (...) these types of deliberation dialogues supported by the GAAM comply with criteria for normative principles for deliberation, specifically, Alexy’s rules for discourse ethics and Hitchcock’s Principles of Rational Mutual Inquiry. The connection of reasoning to the community in a documented and transparent structure assists in providing best justified reasons, principles of deliberation and ethical discourse which are important advantages for reasoning communities. (shrink)