Induction of defeasible logic theories in the legal domain

ABSTRACT

Defeasible Logic is a promising representation for legal knowledge that appears to overcome many of the deficiencies of previous approaches to representing legal knowledge. Unfortunately, an immediate application of technology to the challenges of generating theories in the legal domain is an expensive and computationally intractable problem. So, in light of the potential benefits, we seek to find a practical algorithm that uses heuristics to discover an approximate solution. As an outcome of this work, we have developed an algorithm that integrates defeasible logic into a decision support system by automatically deriving its knowledge from databases of precedents. Experiments with the new algorithm are very promising -- delivering results comparable to and exceeding other approaches.

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