Giuseppe Contissa

Fill the Gap in the Legal Knowledge Modelling

There is a gap between the legal text description in XML trends and the legal knowledge representation of the norms that from the text starts. This gap affects the effectiveness of the legal resources exploitation and the integrity of the legal knowledge on the Web. This paper presents a legal document model for managing the legal resources in integrated way and linking all the different levels of representation.

Modelling temporal legal rules

Legal reasoning involves multiple temporal dimensions but the existing state of the art of legal representation languages does not allow us to easily combine expressiveness, performance and legal reasoning requirements. Moreover we also aim at the combination of legal temporal reasoning with the defeasible logic approach, maintaining a computable complexity. The contribution of this work is to extend LKIF-rules with temporal dimensions and defeasible tools, extending our previous work [17].

Temporal Dimensions in Rules Modelling

Typically legal reasoning involves multiple temporal dimensions. The contribution of this work is to extend LKIF-rules (LKIF is a proposed mark-up language designed for legal documents and legal knowledge in ESTRELLA Project [3]) with temporal dimensions. We propose an XML-schema to model the various aspects of the temporal dimensions in legal domain, and we discuss the design choices. We illustrate the use of the temporal dimensions in rules with the help of real life examples.

The Ethical Knob: ethically-customisable automated vehicles and the law

Accidents involving autonomous vehicles (AVs) raise difficult ethical dilemmas and legal issues. It has been argued that self-driving cars should be programmed to kill, that is, they should be equipped with pre-programmed approaches to the choice of what lives to sacrifice when losses are inevitable. Here we shall explore a different approach, namely, giving the user/passenger the task (and burden) of deciding what ethical approach should be taken by AVs in unavoidable accident scenarios. We thus assume that AVs are equipped with what we call an “Ethical Knob”, a device enabling passengers to ethically customise their AVs, namely, to choose between different settings corresponding to different moral approaches or principles. Accordingly, AVs would be entrusted with implementing users’ ethical choices, while manufacturers/programmers would be tasked with enabling the user’s choice and ensuring implementation by the AV.

Liability and Automation: Issues and Challenges for Socio-technical Systems

Who is responsible for accidents in highly automated systems? How do we apportion liability among the various participants in complex socio-technical organisations? How can different liability regulations at different levels (supranational, national, local) be harmonized? How do we provide for accountability, while promoting safety? These and other questions are being addressed by the ALIAS (Addressing Liability Impact of Automated Systems) project. In this paper we present the outline framework of the project, its objectives, and some preliminary results: in particular, we present a framework for liability in aviation, an analysis of real accidents and of a hypothetical case involving UAS according to a methodology developed in the project, and finally, we introduce the Legal Case, that is a methodological tool (currently under development) aimed at identifying and addressing liability issues of automated ATM systems.

Agent-Based Contracting in Virtual Enterprises

Virtual Enterprises (VEs) use software agents (SAs) to reduce costs, speed up operations, and increase efficiency and competitiveness. Agents can carry out negotiations and make contracts without any human intervention. This makes them useful both in negotiations to set up a VE and in contracting with VE partners. Agents raise legal problems about the relevance and validity of their actions. The law may not always offer a solution to agent-based interactions. This paper investigates whether current laws are suitable to regulating agents and what new rules may need to be introduced.

HARE: an Italian application of SoftLaw's STATUTE expert technology

This paper presents HARE, a rule-based system addressing a section of the Italian law, and in particular the taxes to be paid to start legal proceedings. HARE uses an Italian version of Softlaws STATUTE Expert. We will then shortly describe the main aspects of STATUTE Expert approach and some recent developments of this system.

Vicarious reinforcement and ex ante law enforcement: a study in norm-governed learning agents

We propose a model of vicarious reinforcement in rule-based learning agents. The influence of this reinforcement is investigated in a population where a law is enforced ex ante. The norm-governed population of learning agents is formalised and simulated in an executable probabilistic rule-based argumentation framework. Vicarious experiences are expressed with rules and their learning effects are integrated into reinforcement learning. So, agents learn not only from their own experiences but also by taking into account the experiences of others. We show that simulation results differ from traditional calculus based on expected utilities.

The legal case

This paper presents the first release of the Legal Case, recently developed by the ALIAS Project and still under refinement. The Legal Case is a methodological tool intended to address liability issues of automated ATM systems: it provides for a legal risk management process that can be applied either proactively or retroactively. Used in a proactive way, the Legal Case aims to address the liability issues that may emerge in the design of new technologies. Used in a retroactive way, it is meant to assess liability issues pertaining to an existing piece of technology that has already reached the deployment stage. The Legal Case is mainly designed to be used by a Legal Analyst who is a member of an interdisciplinary project team dealing with the development of new automated technologies (in the case of the proactive approach) or with the accident investigation (in the case of the retroactive approach). Although not yet finalized, the Legal Case methodology is gathering great interest from the ATM community.

A study of ex ante law enforcement in norm-governed learning agents

We investigate ex ante law enforcement within a population of norm-governed learning agents using a probabilistic rule-based argumentation framework. We show that this formal framework can advantageously complete a traditional analysis based on expected utilities, in particular when hyper-rational or omniscient agents are not assumed. This has significant implications for the design of self-organising electronic institutions, where the cost of monitoring and enforcement of laws and norms has to be taken into consideration.