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During a recent visit to China to give an invited lecture on legal argumentation I was asked a question about conventional opinion in western countries. If legal r- soning is thought to be important by those both inside and outside the legal prof- sion, why does there appear to be so little attention given to the study of legal logic? This was a hard question to answer. I had to admit there were no large or well-established centers of legal logic in North America that I could recommend as places to study. Going through customs in Vancouver, the customs officer asked what I had been doing in China. I told him I had been a speaker at a conf- ence. He asked what the conference was on. I told him legal logic. He asked 1 whether there was such a thing. He was trying to be funny, but I thought he had a good point. People will question whether there is such a thing as "legal logic", and some recent very prominent trials give the question some backing in the common opinion. But having thought over the question of why so little attention appears to be given to legal logic as a mainstream subject in western countries, I think I now have an answer. The answer is that we have been looking in the wrong place.
List of contents
Informal Logic Methods for Law.- Generalizations in Legal Reasoning.- Defeasible Reasoning in Dialogue Systems.- Relevance Determinations of Legal Evidence.- Methods Applied to Problems of Evidence.- Dialectical Explanation in AI.- Argument Invention for Proof Preparation.
About the author
Douglas Walton holds the Assumption Chair in Argumentation Studies and is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Canada. He is the author of over thirty-five books in the areas of argumentation, logic and artificial intelligence.
Summary
During a recent visit to China to give an invited lecture on legal argumentation I was asked a question about conventional opinion in western countries. If legal r- soning is thought to be important by those both inside and outside the legal prof- sion, why does there appear to be so little attention given to the study of legal logic? This was a hard question to answer. I had to admit there were no large or well-established centers of legal logic in North America that I could recommend as places to study. Going through customs in Vancouver, the customs officer asked what I had been doing in China. I told him I had been a speaker at a conf- ence. He asked what the conference was on. I told him legal logic. He asked 1 whether there was such a thing. He was trying to be funny, but I thought he had a good point. People will question whether there is such a thing as “legal logic”, and some recent very prominent trials give the question some backing in the common opinion. But having thought over the question of why so little attention appears to be given to legal logic as a mainstream subject in western countries, I think I now have an answer. The answer is that we have been looking in the wrong place.
Additional text
From the reviews:
"In this book, Walton presents his perspective on argumentation methods for artificial intelligence and law. … the different tools are combined in a way that makes them potentially useful for understanding legal reasoning. … this book offers a valuable perspective on the current state and future research directions of argumentation methods for artificial intelligence and law." (Jelle van Veenen, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Vol. 14, 2006)
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From the reviews:
"In this book, Walton presents his perspective on argumentation methods for artificial intelligence and law. ... the different tools are combined in a way that makes them potentially useful for understanding legal reasoning. ... this book offers a valuable perspective on the current state and future research directions of argumentation methods for artificial intelligence and law." (Jelle van Veenen, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Vol. 14, 2006)
