1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

Taking Rights Seriously

Alternative dispute resolution has now supplanted litigation as the principal method of dispute resolution. This overview of dispute resolution addresses practical developments in areas such as family law, plea bargaining, industrial relations and torts. The authors elaborate on the necessary legal safeguards that should be taken into account when developing technology-enhanced dispute resolution and explore a wide range of potential applications for new information technologies in dispute resolution.

Enhanced Dispute Resolution Through the Use of Information Technology

Envisioning a future decision support system for requirements engineering : A holistic and human-centred perspective

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Envisioning a Future Decision Support System for Requirements Engineering - A Holistic and Human-centred Perspective

In this paper, we present a model of reasoning called the generic/actual argument model (GAAM). Reasoning within a discursive community can be represented with this model so that participant claims can be accommodated without recourse to combative metaphors such as attack or defeat. The model facilitates the comprehension of complex reasoning for humans as well as being a computational representation for machine modelling of reasoning. As such, the model naturally integrates machine inferences with human. The model has been the basis for the development of practical systems to support reasoning and deliberation in areas of law and organizational decision making. Here, we present a formal description of the model and identify some of its characteristics.

The generic/actual argument model of practical reasoning

Argumentation concepts have been applied to numerous knowledge engineering endeavours in recent years. For example, a variety of logics have been developed to represent argumentation in the context of a dialectical situation such as a dialogue. In contrast to the dialectical approach, argumentation has also been used to structure knowledge. This can be seen as a non-dialectical approach. The Toulmin argument structure has often been used to structure knowledge non-dialectically yet most studies that apply the Toulmin structure do not use the original structure but vary one or more components. Variations to the Toulmin structure can be understood as different ways to integrate a dialectical perspective with a non-dialectical one. Drawing the dialectical/non-dialectical distinction enables the specification of a framework called the generic actual argument model that is expressly non-dialectical. The framework enables the development of knowledge-based systems that integrate a variety of inference procedures, combine information retrieval with reasoning and facilitate automated document drafting. Furthermore, the non-dialectical framework provides the foundation for simple dialectical models. Systems based on our approach have been developed in family law, refugee law, determining eligibility for government legal aid, copyright law and e-tourism.

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Argumentation structures that integrate dialectical and non-dialectical reasoning

In this paper we have argued that discretion manifests differently in different representations of knowledge. Knowledge representations that are equivalent to a first-order logic formalization are only able to model strong discretion if they are allowed repeated revision of the world that they describe. Higher order representations such as the variations of the Toulmin argument structure described here are able to support and model both weak and strong discretion. It is further argued that consistency also varies in the way it is captured by these levels of knowledge representation. With first-order logical formalisms leading to a specific limited concept of consistency, and higher order representations making consistency an increasingly vague concept. We argue against any unitary view of consistency and suggest it is most usefully defined as an operational concept within a specific practical domain. We also propose that discretion and consistency are not related in any simple and direct fashion, other th...

The Dependency of Discretion and Consistency on Knowledge Representation

This paper contributes to the ebb and flow of innovations in decision support system design by presenting the MODDE methodology (Model Of Decision support system Design and Evaluation). It utilizes a simple conceptualisation of the software engineering process, and aims to provide computer consultants with guidance to the way they may include consideration of three qualitative dimensions of high level autonomous decision making. These three dimensions--discretion, consistency and resolution--have arisen directly from work in an applied legal domain. MODDE facilitates systematic attention to these dimensions in a way not previously done and thus complements existing software and requirements engineering practices.

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan007363.pdf

Towards a New MODDE of Improving Legal Decision Support Design

This paper describes the MODDE (Model of Decision support system Design and Evaluation) framework in some detail. The work is in progress and is being currently applied to the EMBRACE project being developed for the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) of Australia. Refugee law is the general legal area we are working in, while the specific domain under investigation is that of the decision makers at the RRT. EMBRACE is a decision support system being designed to assist the RRT in maintaining consistency of decisions, and preserve discretion of decision makers as well as making it easier to cope with high volumes of work in decreasing time frames. The use of the MODDE framework is intended to facilitate systematic attention to important features of decision making in our specific legal domain and to provide a sound basis upon which to evaluate a part of the system intrinsic to user acceptance.

Tunde Meikle

Papers

The Dependency of Discretion and Consistency on Knowledge Representation

Towards a New MODDE of Improving Legal Decision Support Design

System development a la MODDE