Argumentation

A popular view of what Artificial Intelligence can do for lawyers is that it can do no more than deduce the consequences from a precisely stated set of facts and legal rules. This immediately makes many lawyers sceptical about the usefulness of such systems: this mechanical approach seems to leave out most of what is important in legal reasoning. We will review systems that can store conflicting interpretations and that can propose alternative solutions to a case based on these interpretations. We will also describe systems that can use legal precedents to generate arguments by drawing analogies to or distinguishing precedents. We will discuss systems that can argue why a rule should not be applied to a case even though all its conditions are met. Then there are systems that can act as a mediator between disputing parties by structuring and recording their arguments and responses. Finally we look at systems that suggest mechanisms and tactics for forming arguments.