Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Jurimetrics Journal
Publication Date
Winter 2007
Abstract
This paper presents a visual framework for modelling complex legal reasoning — reasoning that integrates legal rules and policies with expert and non-expert evidence. The framework is based on a many-valued, predicate, default logic. The paper first visualizes the two sides of the rule-evidence interface: rule-based deductions and evidence evaluation. It then explores ways to visualize several dynamics around that interface, including dynamics concerning evidentiary relevance, findings of fact, process decision making about motions, policy-based reasoning about rules and relevant-factor reasoning. The paper then concludes with visualizing dynamics across multiple cases and briefly discusses one pathway by which new legal rules might emerge from the factfinding process. The paper therefore presents a visual working environment for people who litigate or decide actual cases, who study judicial or administrative reasoning or who teach law. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Recommended Citation
Vern R. Walker,
A Default-Logic Paradigm for Legal Fact-Finding, 47 Jurimetrics J. 193
(2007)
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/faculty_scholarship/1237
Comments
©2007 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.