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We study law enforcement mechanisms within a population of norm-governed learning agents. We show that a traditional analysis based on expected utility can be misleading, because learning agents tend to comply even though their surveillance is stopped. This has significant implications for the design of self-organising institutions with endogenous resources, where the cost of monitoring and norm enforcement has to be taken into consideration.

We investigate ex ante law enforcement within a population of norm-governed learning agents using a probabilistic rule-based argumentation framework. We show that this formal framework can advantageously complete a traditional analysis based on expected utilities, in particular when hyper-rational or omniscient agents are not assumed. This has significant implications for the design of self-organising electronic institutions, where the cost of monitoring and enforcement of laws and norms has to be taken into consideration.

This paper proposes a new simulation approach for investigating phenomena such as norm emergence and internalization in large groups of learning agents. We define a probabilistic defeasible logic instantiating Dung’s argumentation framework. Rules of this logic are attached to probabilities and describe the agents’ minds and behaviour. We thus adopt the paradigm of reinforcement learning over this probability distribution to allow agents to adapt to their environment.

We investigate law enforcement within a population of norm- governed learning agents using a probabilistic rule-based argumentation framework. We show that this formal framework can advantageously complete a traditional analysis based on expected utilities for the study of law enforcement systems when more realistic assumptions than hyper-rational agents or some behavourial phenomenon such as inertia are desired. This has signicant implications for the design of systems of retributive justice for self-organising electronic institutions with endoge- nous resources, where the cost of monitoring and enforcement of laws and norms has to be taken into consideration.

This paper proposes to integrate an argumentation framework with techniques from Temporal Constraint Satisfaction. Temporal constraints are thus embedded into legal argumentation to account for temporal aspects of legal reasoning. Through the accommodation of temporal constraints, the validity of arguments and of their conclusions is made relative to the time-points when the applied norms are alive, according to the adopted temporal perspective. A fixed-point semantics and an associated dialogue game are given.

This contribution introduces a novel approach to study legal interactions, legal professions, and legal institutions, by combining argumentation, game theory and evolution. We consider a population of lawyers, having different postures, who engage in adversarial argumentation with other lawyers, obtaining outcomes according the existing context and their chosen strategies. We examine the resulting games and analyse the evolution of the population. Published version of EUI LAW WP 2009/08

This chapter introduces the reader with the specificity of the development of a particular type of legal ontology, that is ontology of copyright law. The process of the development of this ontology (ALIS IP Ontology) should be seen as a miniature guide for anyone who will pursuit a goal to create an ontology for any sphere of law. In this chapter the development of the copyright ontology is not addressed separately as such, but in vaster perspective, analyzing not only particular problems that the development of the legal ontology implies, but also looking at the ontology development issues in the light of the general relation that the law (and intellectual property law in particular) has with the IT domain.

In [1,2,3] basic Defeasible Logic was extended to capture some temporal aspects in legal reasoning. All these extensions can be criticized in two respects: first, a synthetical approach with which all temporal and substantial elements of the norm are represented within the same sentence was adopted instead of an analytical approach in which one sentence represents the substantive content of the norm, and other sentences specify its temporal features. Second, no semantics was provided. This paper aims to provide a Temporal Deontic Defeasible Logic adopting an analytical approach and an argumentation semantics.

The paper is partly based on research done for the EU-funded (IST-2004-2.4.9) project ALIS (Automated Legal Intelligent System) on Intellectual Property Law. We describe the development process of the ALIS Intellectual Property ontology from both a legal and technical perspective. We discuss the scope and the features of this IP ontology, the lessons learned, and the problems solved. This is done by comparing our ontology (the ALIS IP ontology) with the IPRonto ontology, which too is dedicated to IP. The paper also points out the benefits of both the ALIS system in general and the ALIS IP ontology in particular. Future development of ALIS will involve expanding its ontology to also include patent law and trademark law. Once these three legal ontologies are in place, they will be consolidated into a single ontology that will provide the framework for a general IP ontology.

This paper provides a game-theoretical investigation on how to determine optimal strategies in dialogue games for argumentation. To make our ideas as widely applicable as possible, we adopt an abstract dialectical setting and, model dialogues as extensive games with perfect information where optimal strategies are determined by preferences over outcomes of the disputes. In turn, preferences are specified in terms of expected utility combining the probability of success of arguments with the costs and benefits associated to arguments.

The outcome of a legal dispute, namely, the decision of its adjudicator, is uncertain, and both parties develop their strategies on the basis of their appreciation of the probability that the adjudicator will accept their arguments or the arguments of their adversary. Costs and gains have to be balanced in light of this uncertainty in order to identify the most convenient strategies. This paper provides a probabilistic approach embedded into an argumentation framework to capture this uncertainty and its use to determine the expected utility to engage in a legal dispute.

While some recent frameworks on cognitive agents addressed the combination of mental attitudes with deontic concepts, they commonly ignore the representation of time. An exception is [1], which also manages some temporal aspects with regard to both cognition and deontic provisions. We propose in this paper a variant of the logic presented in [1] to deal in particular with temporal intervals.

The paper provides a conceptual analysis of deadlines, represented in Temporal Modal Defeasible Logic. The typology is based on the following parameters: kind of deontic operator, maintenance or achievement, presence of explicit sanctions, and persistence after the deadline. The adequacy of the typology is validated against a case study of a rental agreement.

We provide a conceptual analysis of several kinds of deadlines, represented in Temporal Modal Defeasible Logic. The paper presents a typology of deadlines, based on the following parameters: deontic operator, maintenance or achievement, presence or absence of sanctions, and persistence after the deadline. The deadline types are illustrated by a set of examples.

This paper proposes a framework based on Defeasible Logic (DL) to reason about normative modifications. We show how to express them in DL and how the logic deals with conflicts between temporalised normative modifications. Some comments will be given with regard to the phenomenon of retroactivity.

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First published online: 31 August 2019 A modular rule-based argumentation system is proposed to represent and reason upon conditional norms featuring obligations, prohibitions, and (strong or weak) permissions. The approach is based on common constructs in computational models of argument: rule-based arguments, argumentation graphs, argument labelling semantics and statement labelling semantics. Deontic reasoning patterns are captured with defeasible rule schemata to the greatest extent, towards the reification of doctrinal pieces. We show then that bivalent statement labelling s can fall short to address normative completeness, and for this reason, we propose to use trivalent labelling semantics. Given an argumentation graph, deontic statuses can be computed efficiently. The system is illustrated with a scenario featuring a violation and a contrary-to-duty obligation.