Reasoning About Legal Evidence

IVR 2007 Special Workshop

2, 4, and 5 August 2007- Cracow, Poland

A workshop on reasoning about legal evidence will be held as part of the 23rd IVR Congress Special Workshop programme.

Reasoning about evidence plays an important role in legal cases. Fact finders and crime investigators have to reason from the evidence to a conclusion and, particularly in the investigative phase, also vice versa: alternative hypotheses (tentative conclusions) must be generated and both supporting and refuting evidence must be found in order to compare the hypotheses. In this reasoning process often commonsense knowledge is applied or assumed, the status and quality of which can be subject to discussion. In the study of evidential reasoning some researchers have tried to gain insights into the complexities of this kind of reasoning while others have developed normative models describing how legal reasoning about evidence should proceed. 

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from various fields interested in rational or descriptive models of legal evidential reasoning. To promote the exchange of ideas, the workshop organisers will invite researchers from these disciplines to discuss different approaches to modelling reasoning about evidence. Researchers who are interested in the topic are invited to submit proposals for papers.

Topics of particular interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Argumentation theory and evidence
  • Argumentation support software for evidential reasoning
  • Burden of proof
  • Statistics and evidence
  • The role of stories in evidential reasoning

The authors of workshop contributions will be invited to submit a revised version of their contributions to an edited volume provisionally titled Conflict Resolution: The Facts – Essays on Legal Evidence and Logic (eds. H. Kaptein, H. Prakken & B. Verheij), to appear with Ashgate publishers in 2008. Submissions to this volume will be subjected to a separate reviewing process.

Organisers

Abstracts and presentations

  • Amalia Amaya, Harvard Law School, Inference to the best legal explanation [abstract]

  • Lennart Åqvist, Uppsala University, An Interpretation of Probability in the Law of Evidence Based on Pro-et-Contra Argumentation [abstract]

  • Floris Bex, U. Groningen, Formalising Argumentative Story-based Analysis of Evidence [abstract] [slides]

  • Floris Bex & Henry Prakken, U. Groningen / Utrecht University, Reasoning with testimony: argumentation v. explanatory coherence [abstract] [slides]

  • Enrique Cáceres Nieto, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Judicial decision support systems and legal cognitive constructivism [abstract]

  • Jelte Hielkema, University of Groningen, Judges, experts and factfinding in Dutch criminal procedure [abstract]

  • Hendrik Kaptein, Leiden University, Contested facts in (and of) conflict resolution: On material legal and moral presuppositions for rules of evidence in adjudication [abstract]

  • Hendrik Kaptein, Leiden University, Evidence, facts and logic: abduction against mere products of procedure [abstract]

  • Hans Nijboer, Leiden University, The general part of forensic expertise [abstract]

  • Henry Prakken U. Groningen / U. Utrecht & Giovanni Sartor, EUI-Florence / U. Bologna, A logical analysis of burdens of proof [abstract]

  • Burkhardt Schäfer, University of Edinburgh, Asymmetric relations in evidentiary reasoning [abstract]