Evaluating cases in legal disputes as rival theories
Date
2010
Authors
Li, Jason
Stenetorp, Pontus
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
In this paper we propose to draw a link from the quantitative notion of coherence, previously used to evaluate rival scientific theories, to legal reasoning. We evaluate the stories of the plaintiff and the defendant in a legal case as rival theories by measuring how well they cohere when accounting for the evidence. We show that this gives rise to a formalized comparison between rival cases that account for the same set of evidence, and provide a possible explanation as to why judgements may favour one side over the other. We illustrate our approach by applying it to a known legal dispute from the literature.
Description
Keywords
Keywords: coherence; legal argument; Legal case; Legal disputes; legal justification; Legal reasoning; Scientific theories; Theory construction; Artificial intelligence coherence; legal argument; legal justification; theory construction
Citation
Collections
Source
Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop of Juris-infomatics (JURISIN 2009)
Type
Conference paper
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
2037-12-31
Downloads
File
Description