Visualization tools, argumentation schemes and expert opinion evidence in law

Presented at the workshop on "Graphic and visual representations of evidence and inference in legal settings" at Cardozo School of Law, New York City, 28th -29th January 2007. New models of evidential reasoning have been closely tied in with the development of visualization tools in artificial intelligence, especially automated systems for argument diagramming. Surveying several models and visualization tools recently developed in artificial intelligence, this paper argues that any discussion of visualization methods or tools of this sort should focus on their suitability for visualizing argumentation schemes, including critical questions. The classic scheme, used in this paper to illustrate how schemes need to be a vital part of advancing argumentation technology in tools for evidence visualization in law, is that for argument from expert opinion. The visualization of argumentation schemes is illustrated using a new version of the scheme, which takes into consideration Supreme Court rulings on the admissibility of expert witness testimony

Intuitions and the modelling of defeasible reasoning: some case studies

The purpose of this paper is to address some criticisms recently raised by John Horty in two articles against the validity of two commonly accepted defeasible reasoning patterns, viz. reinstatement and floating conclusions. I shall argue that Horty's counterexamples, although they significantly raise our understanding of these reasoning patterns, do not show their invalidity. Some of them reflect patterns which, if made explicit in the formalisation, avoid the unwanted inference without having to give up the criticised inference principles. Other examples seem to involve hidden assumptions about the specific problem which, if made explicit, are nothing but extra information that defeat the defeasible inference. These considerations will be put in a wider perspective by reflecting on the nature of defeasible reasoning principles as principles of justified acceptance rather than `real' logical inference.Comment: Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR'2002), Toulouse, France, April 19-21, 200

An Argumentation Interface for Expert Opinion Evidence

Tribunals have come to depend increasingly on expertise for determining the facts in cases. However, current legal methods have proved problematic to work with. This paper argues that, as a special model of public understanding of science, assessing expertise should consider source credibility of expertise from internal aspects, including scientific validity and reliability, and external aspects involving the credibility of experts. Using the Carneades Argumentation System we show that the internal and the external aspects are mediated by the structure of the argument from expert opinion with its matching set of critical questions

A Carneades reconstruction of Popov v Hayashi

Carneades is an open source argument mapping application and a programming library for building argumentation support tools. In this paper, Carneades’ support for argument reconstruction, evaluation and visualization is illustrated by modeling most of the factual and legal arguments in Popov v Hayashi

Argument from Expert Opinion as Legal Evidence: Critical Questions and Admissibility Criteria of Expert Testimony in the American Legal System

While courts depend on expert opinions in reaching sound judgments, the role of the expert witness in legal proceedings is associated with a litany of problems. Perhaps most prevalent is the question of under what circumstances should testimony be admitted as expert opinion. We review the changing policies adopted by American courts in an attempt to ensure the reliability and usefulness of the scientific and technical information admitted as evidence. We argue that these admissibility criteria are best seen in a dialectical context as a set of critical questions of the kind commonly used in models of argumentation

Some Artificial Intelligence Tools for Argument Evaluation: An Introduction

Even though tools for identifying and analyzing arguments are now in wide use in the field of argumentation studies, so far there is a paucity of resources for evaluating real arguments, aside from using deductive logic or Bayesian rules that apply to inductive arguments. In this paper it is shown that recent developments in artificial intelligence in the area of computational systems for modeling defeasible argumentation reveal a different approach that is currently making interesting progress. It is shown how these systems provide the general outlines for a system of argument evaluation that can be applied to legal arguments as well as everyday conversational arguments to assist a user to evaluate an argument

In memoriam Douglas N. Walton: the influence of Doug Walton on AI and law

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

AI & Law, logic and argument schemes

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