Electronic institutions with normative environments for agent-based E-contracting

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

A context-based institutional normative environment

We explore the concept of an agent-based Electronic Institution including a normative environment that supports electronic contract formation by providing a contextual normative background. We formalize the normative state using first-order logic and define institutional rules and norms operating on that state. A suitable semantics regarding the use of norms within a hierarchical context structure is given, based on norm activation conflict and defeasibility. Norm activation relies on substitution as in first-order logic. Reasoning about the fulfillment and violation of deadline obligations is formalized using linear temporal logic; implementation with institutional rules is discussed. Examples exploiting the normative environment are given. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009

Intuitionism, Practical Reasoning and Defeasibility

This text considers the contributions that cognitive sciences can make to the study of legal reasoning, distinguishing between descriptive, conceptual and normative impacts. In particular, it is concerned with exploring Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionism thesis, which says that, when we reason about moral and practical issues, we make a decision intuitively, which we then rationalise a posteriori (although at this stage reason cannot change the decision made). The text considers how this thesis would apply to the problem of the defeasibility of rules, which it takes as one of the characteristic features of legal reasoning. Finally, some objections are presented to Haidt’s thesis and to the normative claims of some cognitive scientists

Dworkin versus Hart Revisited: The Challenge of Non-Lexical Determination

A fundamental task for legal philosophy is to explain what makes it the case that the law has the content that it does. Anti-positivists say that moral norms play an ineliminable role in the determination of legal content, while positivists say that they play no role, or only a contingent one. Increasingly, scholars report finding the debate stale. This article hopes to freshen it by, ironically, revisiting what might be thought its opening round: Dworkin’s challenge to Hartian positivism leveled in The Model of Rules I. It argues that the underappreciated significance of Dworkin’s distinction between rules and principles is not that Hart’s model cannot allow for the existence of legal principles, but that it cannot make sense of their operation. Hart’s model posits that legal rules are determined in a rule-like (“lexical”) way, whereas legal principles contribute to rules in a manner that is at least partly non-lexical. The upshots of this reinterpretation are: first (against most positivists) that Dworkin’s challenge does require some reworking of Hart’s positivist theory; and second (against most anti-positivists) that the reworking required to meet Dworkin’s challenge does not necessitate positivism’s abandonment

A note on validity in law and regulatory systems (position paper)

The notion of validity fulfils a crucial role in legal theory. The emerging Web 3.0 opens a new landscape where Semantic Web languages, legal ontologies, and the construction of Normative Multiagent Systems are built up to cover new regulatory needs. Conceptual models for complex regulatory systems shape the characteristic features of rules, norms and principles in different ways. This position paper outlines one of such multilayered governance models, designed for the CAPER platform

Defeasible Logic: Agency, Intention and Obligation

We propose a computationally oriented non-monotonic multi-modal logic arising from the combination of agency, intention and obligation. We argue about the defeasible nature of these notions and then we show how to represent and reason with them in the setting of defeasible logic

The method and object of legal theory according to Cristina Redondo

In ‘Internal’ Legal Positivism, Cristina Redondo attempts to articulate the metatheoretical presuppositions of an approach directed to the study of law that explains its specific normative character. In doing so, she argues for, among others, two main theses: (i) legal norms necessarily constitute reasons in a formal sense, regardless of the substantive correctness of the content they express; (ii) legal theory can be morally neutral with respect to its object. This means that, according to Redondo, it is possible to formulate purely descriptive statements that refer to the content of law; that is, it is possible to formulate them from a point of view that does not presuppose the acceptance of that content. The expression "´internal´ legal positivism" is the terminology chosen by Redondo to account for the type of methodological approach necessary for a positivist theory of law à la Hart to be possible. In this article, I will summarize the main theses defended by the author in her book and trace the central questions that have been at the heart of the discussion at the Symposium on ‘Internal’ Legal Positivism published in this journal.Fil: Gaido, Paula Marina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales; Argentin

Rights of Nature and Indigenous Cosmovision: A Fundamental Inquiry

In this paper, I ask whether we can weigh and balance indigenous cosmovision—the reasoning used as the main source of legitimacy in some rights of nature legislation—within a secular legal system. I examine three barriers that rights of nature and their corollary spiritual reasoning are likely to encounter if they are invoked in secular courts: (a) spiritual reasoning is non-defeasible (Part 3) and (b) irrational (Part 4), and (3) the current concept of human rights as a universal legal norm is based on a circular logic (Part 5). In order to overcome these barriers, I draw inspiration from Dworkin’s ‘rights as trumps’ thesis and the proportionality principle (5.2), and propose that for rights of nature and their spiritual connotation to be operational in a secular court, we need to create an exception—a meta rule for these legal concepts—and subject them to the proportionality principle