A Goal-Dependent Abstraction for Legal Reasoning by Analogy
Authors: Kakuta T.1; Haraguchi M.2; Okubo Y.2
Source: Artificial Intelligence and Law, Volume 5, Numbers 1-2, March 1997 , pp. 97-118(22)
Publisher: Springer
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Abstract:
This paper presents a new algorithm to find an appropriate similarity under which we apply legal rules analogically. Since there may exist a lot of similarities between the premises of rule and a case in inquiry, we have to select an appropriate similarity that is `relevant' to both the legal rule and a top goal of our legal reasoning. For this purpose, a new criterion to distinguish the appropriate similarities from the others is proposed and tested. The criterion is based on `Goal-Dependent Abstraction' (GDA) to select a similarity such that an abstraction based on the similarity never loses the necessary information to prove the `ground' (purpose of legislation) of the legal rule. In order to cope with our huge space of similarities, our GDA algorithm uses some constraints to prune useless similarities.
Keywords: legal reasoning; analogy; similarity; order-sorted logid; taxonomic hierarchy; goal-dependent abstraction
Language: English
Document Type: Regular paper
Affiliations: 1: Department of Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226, Japan (E-mail: kaku@int.titech.ac.jp) 2: Division of Electronics and Information Engineering, Hokkaido University, N-13, W-8, Sapporo 060, Japan (E-mail: {makoto, yoshiaki}@db.huee.hokudai.ac.jp)
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