Arg-tuProlog: A Modular Logic Argumentation Tool for PIL

open5noPrivate international law (PIL) addresses overlaps and conflicts between legal systems by distributing cases between the authorities of such systems (jurisdiction) and establishing what rules these authorities have to apply to each case(choice of law). A modular argumentation tool, Arg-tuProlog, is here presented that enables reasoning with rules and interpretations of multiple legal systems.Roberta Calegari and Giovanni Sartor have been supported by the H2020 ERC Project “CompuLaw” (G.A. 833647).Giuseppe Contissa, Giuseppe Pisano and Galileo Sartor have been supported by the European Union’s Justice programme under Grant Agreement No. 800839 for the project “InterLex: Advisory and Training System for Internet-related private International Law”.openCalegari, Roberta; Contissa, Giuseppe; Pisano, Giuseppe; Sartor, Galileo; Sartor, GiovanniCalegari, Roberta; Contissa, Giuseppe; Pisano, Giuseppe; Sartor, Galileo; Sartor, Giovann

Modular Logic Argumentation in Arg-tuProlog

A modular extension of Arg-tuProlog, a light-weight argumentation tool, is here presented and discussed, highlighting how it enables reasoning with rules and interpretations of multiple legal systems. Its effectiveness is demonstrated with examples from different national private international law (PIL) laws, running in Arg-tuProlog. PIL addresses overlaps and conflicts between legal systems by distributing cases between the authorities of such systems (jurisdiction) and establishing what rules these authorities have to apply to each case (choice of law)

Interpretation across legal systems

In this paper we extend a formal framework presented in [6] to model reasoning across legal systems. In particular, we propose a logical system that encompasses the various interpretative interactions occurring between legal systems in the context of private international law. This is done by introducing meta-rules to reason with interpretive canons

Argumentation and Defeasible Reasoning in the Law

Different formalisms for defeasible reasoning have been used to represent knowledge and reason in the legal field. In this work, we provide an overview of the following logic-based approaches to defeasible reasoning: defeasible logic, Answer Set Programming, ABA+, ASPIC+, and DeLP. We compare features of these approaches under three perspectives: the logical model (knowledge representation), the method (computational mechanisms), and the technology (available software resources). On top of that, two real examples in the legal domain are designed and implemented in ASPIC+ to showcase the benefit of an argumentation approach in real-world domains. The CrossJustice and Interlex projects are taken as a testbed, and experiments are conducted with the Arg2P technology

Detecting conflicts in legal systems

Abstract. When acting in different jurisdictions (e.g. under the laws of different countries) at the same time, it can be of great value for individuals to be able to determine whether disparities among the laws of these different systems exist and allowing them to identify the consequences that may follow from these dispari-ties. For individuals, it is typically not of interest to find all the ways in which these legal systems differ, but rather to establish whether a particular course of action may have different legal interpretations, depending on the jurisdiction. In this paper we present a formal and computational framework that, given specific scenarios (descriptions of courses of action), can automatically detect whether these scenarios could lead to different outcomes. We demonstrate our approach by means of a private international law case-study where a company drafts a con-tract clause after examining the consequences in the available jurisdictions.

JURI SAYS:An Automatic Judgement Prediction System for the European Court of Human Rights

In this paper we present the web platform JURI SAYS that automatically predicts decisions of the European Court of Human Rights based on communicated cases, which are published by the court early in the proceedings and are often available many years before the final decision is made. Our system therefore predicts future judgements of the court. The platform is available at jurisays.com and shows the predictions compared to the actual decisions of the court. It is automatically updated every month by including the prediction for the new cases. Additionally, the system highlights the sentences and paragraphs that are most important for the prediction (i.e. violation vs. no violation of human rights)

A Coherence Maximisation Process For Solving Normative Inconsistencies

Norms can be used in multi-agent systems for defining patterns of behaviour in terms of permissions, prohibitions and obligations that are addressed to agents playing a specific role. Agents may play different roles during their execution and they may even play different roles simultaneously. As a consequence, agents may be affected by inconsistent norms; e.g., an agent may be simultaneously obliged and forbidden to reach a given state of affairs. Dealing with this type of inconsistency is one of the main challenges of normative reasoning. Existing approaches tackle this problem by using a static and predefined order that determines which norm should prevail in the case where two norms are inconsistent. One main drawback of these proposals is that they allow only pairwise comparison of norms; it is not clear how agents may use the predefined order to select a subset of norms to abide by from a set of norms containing multiple inconsistencies. Furthermore, in dynamic and non-deterministic environments it can be difficult or even impossible to specify an order that resolves inconsistencies satisfactorily in all potential situations. In response to these two problems, we propose a mechanism with which an agent can dynamically compute a preference order over subsets of its competing norms by considering the coherence of its cognitive and normative elements. Our approach allows flexible resolution of normative inconsistencies, tailored to the current circumstances of the agent. Moreover, our solution can be used to determine norm prevalence among a set of norms containing multiple inconsistencies

Interpretive Interactions among Legal Systems and Argumentation Schemes

This thesis is about argumentation schemes that help to deal with interactions between national and foreign canons of interpretation in private international law cases. In fact, many legal orders, like Italy, require that, in conflict of laws disputes, courts apply the relevant foreign law using canons of interpretation and rules of application of the original foreign system. Our research hypothesis is that, in interpreting the foreign rule, domestic courts incur interpretive divergences of many kinds among the involved legal systems. Foreign law interpretation may result in linguistic and/or conceptual misalignments, in normative and/or interpretive gaps, and in specific incompatibilities between inner and foreign canons of interpretation. By focusing on interpretive conflicts within one legal system, legal theorists and AI and Law scholars have not yet paid sufficient attention to the issue, even if pluralist logics and argumentation have been generally applied to legal pluralism and conflict of laws. The present study fills this gap in the literature: it explores the feasibility of a theory for arguing and interpreting in private international law contexts, providing an argument-based conceptual framework that encompasses plausible interpretive interactions. To this end, and after addressing the epistemic concerns foreign law raises for domestic judges, the thesis gives a definition of cross-border interpretive incompatibilities and proposes argumentation schemes to reason with interpretive canons coming from different legal systems. An illustrative list of critical questions is used to evaluate the correctness of such interpretive reasoning. Lastly, the thesis presents the first formal developments of the study, based on the concept of meta-argumentation. It is possible to detect two main contributions to knowledge. First, this work identifies the components of foreign law interpretation, an interpretation activity with significant practical implications for legal systems today. In so doing, it also indirectly contributes to better understand interpretation at large. Secondly, its argument-based analysis paves the way for further formal applications in the domain of AI and Law