Law and logic: a review from an argumentation perspective

Abstract

This article reviews legal applications of logic, with a particularly marked concern for logical models of legal argument. We argue that the law is a rich test bed and important application field for logic-based AI research. First applications of logic to the representation of legal regulations are reviewed, where the main emphasis is on representation and where the legal conclusions follow from that representation as a matter of deduction. This includes the representation of deontic concepts, normative positions, legal ontologies, time and change. Then legal applications of logic are reviewed where legal rules are not just applied but are the object of reasoning and discourse. This includes arguing about applying statutory rules in unforeseen circumstances, interpretative reasoning in light of the facts of a case, and evidential reasoning to establish the facts of a case. This part of the review has special emphasis on argumentation-based approaches. This also holds for the final part, which discusses formal models of legal procedure and of multi-agent interaction in legal proceedings. The review concludes with identifying some of the main open research problems. The review shows that modern legal applications of logic confirm the recent trend of widening the scope of logic from deduction to information flow, argumentation and interaction.