Artificial Intelligence and law

The law is a societally important and scientifically rich and challenging application domain of artificial intelligence. Much of my research in this field has been on computational models of legal argumentation. Early work was my my 1997 book (a revised and extended version of my 1993 PhD thesis). Subsequently I developed with Giovanni Sartor a logic for rule-based legal argumentation [Prakken & Sartor 1996]. In this logic the standards for comparing arguments are also debatable. Other topics I have studied are Dialogue game models of legal procedures; see, for instance, my AI & Law Journal article on A formal model of adjudication dialogues and an application of this model in a case study; and Formal modelling of burdens of proof, with Giovanni Sartor, applying our argumentation logic in the context of my work on dialogue models of legal procedure; see e.g. our ICAIL-2007 and JURIX-2011 papers.

My current work in AI and Law focuses on four main themes:

• Legal reasoning about evidence. See, for example, two articles in Law, Probability & Risk (2004, 2014), my 2004 AI & Law Journal paper with Floris Bex, Chris Reed and Doug Walton on formalising evidential argument schemes, my ICAIL-2005 paper on accrual of arguments, an edited volume on Legal Evidence and Proof: Statistics, Stories, Logic, a recently co-edited special issue of Topics in Cognitive Science on Models of Rational Proof in Criminal Law, and two double PhD projects:
  • Making sense of evidence on software support for crime investigation;
  • Designing and Understanding Forensic Bayesian Networks with Arguments and Scenarios.

• Modelling case-based and teleological legal reasoning. This work builds on my early work with Giovanni Sartor on formalizing factor-based reasoning with precedents [Prakken & Sartor 1998]. My current work includes a JLC 2015 paper with Adam Wyner, Trevor Bench-Capon and Katie Atkinson on formalising argumentation schemes for legal case-based reasoning in ASPIC+. I believe that this kind of work can help in explaining legal machine-learning applications. I have a PhD position available on that topic.

• AI & Law and autonomous systems. This research line concerns the problem of making autonomous systems behave in a legally and ethically responsible way. See my 2016 position paper on the general problem and my 2017 AI & Law Journal paper on making autonomous vehicles conform to traffic law.

• The computer judge. The recent successes in machine learning have led many in the legal world to believe that the computer judge is near. Some recent algorithms that predict outcomes of legal cases are often cited as evidence. I believe that these expectations are largely based on misconceptions of what such predictive models can do for the law. I have recently (co-)written two papers in Dutch journals about this: Prakken (NJB 2018) and Bex & Prakken (AA 2020). Bex and I intend to write an English-language extended and revised version of our paper. My NJB 2018 paper was cited by the Dutch minister of Justice in a letter to the Dutch parliament. I was interviewed about the 'robot judge' in the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

Associations, interest groups, resources, blogs, ...

• IAAIL - International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law
• JURIX - Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge-based Systems
• computationallegalstudies.com, by Daniel Katz, Michael Bommarito and John Zelner.

Workshops and Conferences

• 33rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2020).
  Online, organised by the University of Prague (Czech Republic), 9-11 December 2020.

• 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2021).
  Sao Paulo (Brazil), 21-25 June 2021 (tentative dates).

• International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL): 1987-2009 Pittsburgh 2011 Rome 2013 San Diego 2015 London 2017 Montreal 2019.
• International Conferences on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX): 1988-2011 Amsterdam 2012 Bologna 2013 Krakow 2014 Braga 2015 Nice 2016 Luxemburg 2017 Groningen 2018, Madrid 2019.
• International Conferences on Electronic Government (eGOV)
• Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion Salzburg/Vienna, Austria: 2015 (with links to 2003-2013).
• Summer Schools on Law and Logic, Fiesole, Forence (Italy).
• First AI & Law Summer School. Fiesole, Florence (Italy), 8-10 July 2019.
• LEX Summerschools on managing legal sources. Florence/Ravenna (Italy).
• International Workshops on Juris-informatics (JURISIN): 2007, 2008, 2009 2010 2011 2012 2014 2015 2016 2019.
  
• CodeX FutureLaw Conferences: 2016, 2015.
• International Conferences on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law, Brno, Czech republic: 2011, 2012, 2013.
• MIREL workshop on MIning and REasoning with Legal texts.
  Luxemburg, 17 September 2018.
• AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Scociety.
  New Orleans (USA), 1-3 February 2018.
• Conferences on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT*): FAT* 2018 Atlanta 2019.
• International Conference on Machine Ethics and Machine Law.
  Krakow (Poland), 18-19 November 2016.
• Conference on Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence: Law and Justice.
  Montreal (Canada), 27 October 2016.
• ECAI 2016 Workshop on AI for Justice.
  The Hague (The Netherlands), 30 August 2016.
• Workshop on Legal Text, Document, and Corpus Analytics (LTDCA 2016).
  San Diego (USA), 17 June 2016.
• Workshop Responsible Intelligent Systems in Perspective; where Computer Science, Philosophy and Legal Theory meet
  Utrecht (The Netherlands), 18-19 April 2016.
• Zif Workshop on Models of Rational Proof in Criminal Law.
  Bielefeld (Germany), 28-30 September 2015.
• 2014 Stanford Symposium on Law & Rationality: Trial With and Without Mathematics
  Stanford (USA), 30 May 2014.
• 2nd International Conference on Quantitative Aspects of Justice and Fairness (QAIJF 2011)
  Fiesole, Florence (Italy), 25-26 February 2011.
• Conference on Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings (conference brochure)
  New York, USA, 28-29 January 2007.
• Workshop `Dialectical Legal Argument: Formal and Informal Models'.
  Tilburg (The Netherlands), 12 December 1996.

Journals

• Artificial Intelligence and Law
• SCRIPTed: A Journal of Law, Technology & Society

Research projects

• Designing and Understanding Forensic Bayesian Networks with Arguments and Scenarios.
• Making sense of evidence.
  • Some press about this project:
    • The Dutch press about Susan van den Braak's PhD thesis on Sensemaking Software for Crime Analysis.
    • The Dutch press about Floris Bex's PhD thesis.
    • Floris Bex's weblog entry for a Cornell law School weblog.

Research Groups, Labs

• Dutch Police Lab AI.
• Leibniz Center for Law, Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam.
• CODEX: Stanford Center for Computers and Law.

People