The Role of Semantics in Legal Expert Systems and Legal Reasoning*

The Role of Semantics in Legal Expert Systems and Legal Reasoning* R.K. Stamper

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The Role of Semantics in Legal Expert Systems and Legal Reasoning* 1991 Ratio Juris 10.1111/j.1467-9337.1991.tb00094.x stamper1991-the-role-of-semantics-in-legal-exp stamper1991-the-role-of-semantics-in-legal-exp.txt, the project's staged copy 8faee04a8bf958510172ba907e09b2abcfa63b37 open-access artificial-intelligence-and-law

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0 spans located by searching the stored text for the quote's exact words, allowing any whitespace between them critique Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. semantics of legal expert systems Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. system-or-tool-building system-or-tool-building Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms The freedom to invent 'fat predicates' lets each analyst build a private language, which in turn produces complexity, rigidity, the illusion of natural-language understanding and the difficulty of merging systems Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms Forcing analysis down to individual words and placing them in an ontological structure removes the arbitrariness, because the structure itself generates the questions the analyst must answer Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The proposed alternative formalism is admittedly unfinished. what this limits: the proposed alternative formalism: THE WORK IS NOT YET COMPLETE Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The intermediate Legol solution is acknowledged to be defective and not to function as a logic. what this limits: the intermediate Legol solution specifically: THIS INTERMEDIATE SOLUTION IS FULL OF DEFECTS Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The intermediate solution still rests on the assumptions of the framework the paper criticises. what this limits: the claim that the paper's own proposal escapes the problem it diagnoses: DESPITE THESE ADVANCES, THIS INTERMEDIATE SOLUTION FAILS TO BREAK AWAY FROM THE OLD, DEFECTIVE FRAMEWORK Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Formal logic does not supply the meanings it appears to encode: knowing what the predicates mean requires already knowing which individuals fall into the classes they name. what this limits: a legal rule encoded in predicate logic as a representation of its meaning: the paper states one must already assume knowledge of which individuals have the properties named by the predicates Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The reasoning the systems are meant to support is stated to be unmechanisable. what this limits: a legal expert system as a substitute for legal reasoning: the paper states much of the required reasoning needs creative thinking, judgment and accountability, and cannot be mechanised Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The paper relabels the systems to scope the claim, while explicitly not denying their value. what this limits: the label 'expert system' for these tools: the paper proposes 'bureaucratic expert systems' as the accurate description, while stating this does not deny their potential value Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The paper's central objection is put as a question about TRANSFER rather than as a demonstration: why expect a logic devised by mathematicians for their own work to move comfortably into law and other practical social affairs, which do not share its special properties. The argument is that the transfer was never licensed, not that a particular system was measured and failed. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Weber's ideal-type model of bureaucratic administration is applied to rule-based legal expert systems, which is what licenses the paper's reclassification of them as 'bureaucratic' rather than 'legal' expert systems Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. bureaucratic expert systems bureaucratic expert systems Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. citizenship citizenship Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. predicate logic predicate logic Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. fat predicates fat predicates Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. semantics semantics Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. citizenship - a concept whose MEANINGS MULTIPLY WITH ITS CRITERIA: it exists by virtue of several different criteria, and the paper says this gives rise to several different meanings Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. preservation of wording - a professional practice with a stated reason: lawyers keep forms of words that have survived judicial scrutiny, and see danger in casual reformulation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. fat predicates - elongated symbols that resemble natural language and are given meaning by the analyst rather than by the system; the paper calls the habit the Humpty Dumpty syndrome Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. contradicts → Susskind (1987), Expert Systems in Law Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. builds-on → Dworkin's argument from principles Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. A legal expert system built on propositional logic has essentially no semantics of its own: whoever assigns truth-values to the elementary propositions performs all the interpretation, and the machine merely computes consequences. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Propositional logic recognises no unit smaller than a whole proposition, not even individual words. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Predicate logic leaves the ontology to the analyst's discretion — the same content can be modelled either as a separate individual or folded into a longer predicate — so what exists in the knowledge base is decided arbitrarily. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Two engineers formalising the same legal concept in predicate logic arrive at an identical expression only by happy accident. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Because each application invents its own private predicate language, separate legal knowledge bases cannot be integrated by simply merging their rules. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. In a legal dispute, truth is reached at the end of the process rather than given at its start. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Existence here-and-now takes the place of truth as the primitive concept, because existence is easy to operationalise. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The logic always points to the agents in the social system who are responsible for using the constructs the formalism expresses. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. In Norma an open system is the only possible representation. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The resulting method of analysis proved effective in designing systems cheaper to build and far cheaper to maintain than conventionally developed ones. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. bureaucratic expert systems bureaucratic expert systems Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. the conduit metaphor of language the conduit metaphor of language Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. fat predicates fat predicates Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. realisation realisation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. norm norm Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ontology chart ontology chart Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Norma Norma Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. MEASUR MEASUR Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. semantic unit semantic unit Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. epistemological principles epistemological principles Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ontological dependent ontological dependent Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ontological antecedent ontological antecedent Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. six pages ... 270 pages — space Twining and Myers devote to deductive reasoning in their 270-page book on legal rules, cited as evidence that deduction is only a small part of legal argumentation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution.

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