Lecturers:
Abstract:Many legal cases involve the comparison, or balancing, or sets of reasons pro and con a decision. Reasons can be either boolean or multi-valued. In the past ten years various formal models of balancing reasons in legal cases have been proposed. This tutorial aims to give an introduction to these models, focussing especially on argument-scheme and reason-based approaches. This work is theoretically interesting as a contribution to AI & Law and legal theory but it can also be the basis for teaching reasoning and argumentation skills to legal decision makers and advocates who want to improve their practical reasoning skills in balancing problems. Tutorial slides:
Henry Prakken Content and motivation:Many legal cases involve the comparison, or balancing, or sets of reasons pro and con a decision. Reasons can be of different kinds: they can be boolean factors pro or con a decision (as in Aleven & Ashley's CATO system), many-valued dimensions relevant to a decision (as in Ashley & Rissland's HYPO system), goals achieved or violated by a decision, or values promoted or demoted by a decision. In the past ten years various formal models of balancing reasons in legal cases have been proposed and it is now timely to introduce their essentials and interrelations to a wider audience, to systematize and consolidate the state-of-the art. Moreover, formal models of balancing reasons in legal cases are also practically relevant, since many court cases involve some or other kind of balancing, and insight into the nature of balancing may help legal decision makers and advocates to improve their practical reasoning skills. This tutorial will give an overview of the following models:
Outline of topics:
Intended audience:Formal models of balancing in legal case-based reasoning are theoretically interesting as a contribution to AI & Law and legal theory. Moreover, they are also practically relevant, since many court cases involve some or other kind of balancing, and insight into the nature of balancing may help legal decision makers and advocates to improve their practical reasoning skills. Accordingly, the intended audience is twofold: researchers in AI & Law or legal theory interested in formal models of legal reasoning and legal argument; and lecturers interested in teaching legal reasoning and argument. Prerequisite knowledge:An analytical mind and familiarity with legal reasoning should suffice to follow most of the tutorial. Introductory knowledge of standard propositional logic is beneficial, as well as elementary knowledge of set theory and the theory of relations and functions. Knowledge of formal models of argumentation is also beneficial but not necessary; the tutorial will contain a brief introduction to such models. Bibliography:Trevor Bench-Capon has an excellent bibliography on Arguing with cases. The most relevant sections for this tutorial are Reconstructing factor-based reasoning, Values and Argumentation schemes. Some additional papers relevant to our tutorial are:
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