Michał Araszkiewicz

Modeling teleological interpretation

The paper presents a model of teleological interpretation of statutory legal rules as well as an example of the genuine law case, which has been modeled with use of established methodology.

Coherence: Insights from Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Artificial Intelligence

This book is a thorough treatise concerned with coherence and its significance in legal reasoning. The individual chapters present the topic from the general philosophical perspective, the perspective of legal-theory as well as the viewpoint of cognitive sciences and the research on artificial intelligence and law. As it has turned out the interchange of knowledge among these disciplines is very fruitful for each of them, providing mutual inspiration and increasing understanding of a given topic. This book is a unique resource for anyone interested in the concept of coherence and the role it plays in reasoning. As this book captures important contemporary issues concerning the ongoing discussion on coherence and law, those interested in legal reasoning should find it particularly helpful. By presenting such a broad scope of views and methods on approaching the issue of coherence we hope to promote the general interest in the topic as well as the academic research that centers around coherence and law.

Factor-based parent plan support system

A factor-based approach to case-based reasoning has been successfully applied in the field of AI and Law to model legal arguments in adversarial judicial procedures. In this paper, we discuss how factors and dimensions can be applied in a dispute-support system that aims to reconcile inconsistent interests of the parties for the sake of a higher-order value, that is, the well being of a child.

Representation of an actual divorce dispute in the parenting plan support system

This paper evaluates the Parenting Plan Support System, a partially implemented decision support system designed to help parents to draft an agreement concerning relations with their children after the divorce, against the background of a real-life case. The focus here is on knowledge representation issues and the functioning of the inference engine.

Analogy, similarity and factors

Analogy has been considered in AI and law primarily in relation to reasoning from precedent cases rather than reasoning from statutes. Where a statutory provision does not apply to a case, the principle of e contrario, that if the case is not covered by the rule the negation of the conclusion can be taken as established, has typically been assumed to apply. There are, however, cases where analogy is an appropriate way to bring a case under a statutory rule. In this paper we discuss using analogy in reasoning with states, and where this should be avoided and e contrario followed. Our account will be based on the notion of factors as developed in AI and law case based reasoning.

Parent Plan Support System - Context, Functions and Knowledge Base

This paper presents a knowledge base (and foundational issues of its operation) for a support system designed for divorcing parents and intending to decide on issues of exercise of parental authority and contacts with children. The legal and functional context of this system is also presented. However, the main focus is on ideas concerning representation of a very complex legal concept, i.e. well-being of the child.

Limits of Constraint Satisfaction Theory of Coherence as a Theory of (Legal) Reasoning

The aim of this paper is to explore the limits of the constraint satisfaction theory of coherence (CsCS) as a basis for a model of legal argumentation concerning questions about norms. The main thesis defended here is that CaCS is a promising basis for such model, but it has to overcome certain important objections. This paper focuses on objections of a technical nature, related to the problems of representation of arguments and relations between arguments in the framework of CaCS. The paper outlines possible ways of dealing with these difficulties and indicates a perspective of further research on the subject.

Incorporation of complex doctrinal theories in a model of statutory interpretation: an example of adequate causal link

This paper shows how a complex legal doctrinal theory (the doctrine of causation in law) may be represented in a semi-formal, two-layered model of statutory interpretation. The content of the theory is clarified by the proposed knowledge representation. It is argued that doctrinal theories in the reading proposed here are a source of intermediate legal concepts and, in consequence, of rules that enable the judge to argue efficiently in complex cases without entering into wider considerations involving case-based reasoning structures.

Argument Structures in Legal Interpretation: Balancing and Thresholds

This paper is a contribution to the development of a descriptive model of legal interpretation encompassing three areas: formulation of interpretive statements, generation of arguments that support or demote the interpretive statements, and comparison and balancing of arguments supporting incompatible interpretive statements. The focus of the paper is on the third layer. A case study is presented to demonstrate how a court uses a technique referred to as ‘threshold conditions’, instead of explicit balancing different values. The nature of this technique will be analysed in the framework of the developed model of legal interpretation. Although the purpose of the paper is theoretical, a practical objective of development of an AI-based legal interpretation support system creates an important background for the investigations.

Framing a Knowledge Base for a Legal Expert System Dealing with Indeterminate Concepts

Despite decades of development of formal tools for modelling legal knowledge and reasoning, the creation of a fully fledged legal decision support system remains challenging. Among those challenges, such system requires an enormous amount of commonsense knowledge to derive legal expertise. This paper describes the development of a negotiation decision support system (the Parenting Plan Support System or PPSS) to support parents in drafting an agreement (the parenting plan) for the exercise of parental custody of minor children after a divorce is granted. The main objective here is to discuss problems of framing an intuitively appealing and computationally efficient knowledge base that can adequately represent the indeterminate legal concept of the well-being of the child in the context of continental legal culture and of Polish law in particular. In addition to commonsense reasoning, interpretation of such a concept demands both legal expertise and significant professional knowledge from other domains.