Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Representing dimensions within the reason model of precedent

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence and Law Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper gives an account of dimensions in the reason model found in Horty (Legal Theory 17(1): 1–33, 2011), Horty and Bench-Capon (in: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, pp 109–118, ACM Press, 2012) and Rigoni (Artif Intell Law 23(2):133–160, 2015. doi:10.1007/s10506-015-9166-x). The account is constructed with the purpose of rectifying problems with the approach to incorporating dimensions in Horty (2017), namely, the problems arising from the collapse of the distinction between the reason model and the result model on that approach. Examination of the newly constructed theory revealed that the importance of dimensions in the reason model lies in their ability to establish weighings between reasons/factors of the same polarity. This permits past cases to constrain future cases in ways they could not on the reason model with just factors. The paper then discusses how dimensions might be established from a case base and how dimensions that are incomplete in various aspects might be dealt with in the theory. It closes with comparisons to other work in the literature on AI and Law and suggestions for further improvement of the reason model.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. That the set of pro-plaintiff reasons is empty is part of Horty’s example, but inessential. What matters is just that the set of pro-plaintiff reasons, outside of those related to the time abroad, remain unchanged in the past and current case.

  2. The switching point receives a formal definition below.

  3. This is based on a similar dimension with more points from HYPO (Ashley 1991). In general, my approach lies between the dimensions of HYPO and the factors of CATO. HYPO allowed dimensions that were continuous (like the length of time abroad), enumerated (like the security measures), Boolean (only extrema are considered), and unary (only point is considered. I convert these to factors. The conversion for Boolean and unary dimensions is straightforward. For enumerated dimensions, I identify factors as corresponding to points or ranges of points on the dimension. For continuous dimensions my strategy is the same, though a great many factors may be required. The approach is very similar to that found in Bench-Capon and Bex (2015) and Prakken et al. 2015), insofar as the dimensions are all treated as order sequences ranges which can then be converted into factors. I am thankful to a reviewer for stressing this comparison.

  4. I use the letter “v” for points instead of the letter “p” to avoid confusion with the notation for pro-plaintiff factors. I had initially called points on a dimension “values,” hence the “v”, but switched to “points” in order to avoid confusion with the different kind of values discussed in Sect. 4.

  5. Matters can be more complicated if the range of points is dense.

  6. This will be a set of ordered sets. Throughout the article I assume that cases only involve one dimension.

  7. For discussion on how a dimension can be introduced, see Al-Abdulkarim et al. (2013) and Ashley (1991).

  8. If cases were characterized using all the factors favoring the losing side and only the remaining factors that were part of the ratio, then the reason and result model are equivalent. This comes at the cost of representing cases that seem very different as equivalent, as the example with the revised Case 1 showed.

  9. The points here are “weak protective measures,” “moderate protective measures,” and “strong protective measures” for V 1, V 2, and V 3, respectively.

  10. Horty (2012) offers a brief discussion of some of possible justifications.

  11. CATO represents a point on a dimension as strict superset of the factor(s) corresponding to the weaker points. As Prakken et al. put it, “That is to say, as we move along the HYPO dimension we collect more and more CATO factors. The increased degree of support is thus given by the cumulative effect of several factors, rather than distinguishing the difference of degree of support given by different positions on the dimension” (2015).

  12. However, the fact of a 30 month stay also entails the fact of a 2 days stay, but a 2 days stay likely corresponds to a pro-plaintiff factor. You do not want the pro-taxpayer factor of a 30 month stay to entail the pro-tax authority factor of a 2 days stay. You can adjust for this by characterizing the pro-plaintiff factors as “at most a—month stay” while the pro-defendant factors are “at least a—month stay”.

  13. This would be done for each dimension, but I’ve stipulated for simplicity that only one dimension is present in the cases. The extension to additional dimensions is clear.

  14. Interstates in Florida have such limits, see Fla. Stat. 316.183 (2017).

  15. Technically the weakest pro-plaintiff factor will also be a switching point.

  16. You can have cases where the weighing established by the case does not establish any ordering for the unordered point. For example, a case where we are told that an unordered point corresponds to a factor that is outweighed by a novel reason. Still, this provides the basis for a future ordering as other cases involving that previously novel reason are decided.

  17. In Bench Capon (Al-abdulkarim et al. 2016) and (Garner 2004, p. 1592) the statement of the resolution at the final level is called the “verdict.” While “verdict” is loosely used to refer to a judge’s resolution of the issues in a non-jury trial (Garner 2004, p. 1592), strictly speaking this is incorrect. The term “verdict” technically refers to “a jury’s finding or decision on the factual issues of a case” (Garner 2004, p. 858). The proper term for a “court’s final determination of the rights and obligations of the parties in a case” is “judgment” (Bench-Capon 2017). This distinction makes possible that last request of the losing trial lawyer: a judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV).

  18. Much interesting work on this topic can be found in Ashley and Walker (2013) and Walker (2007, 2009).

  19. Sentencing guidelines may work in a similar manner. They fix strict maximums and minimums, but then leave the judge complete discretion within those limits and past cases applying the guidelines do not function to narrow this range of discretion.

  20. See Jury Verdict Research Inc (2016), Klein (1991) and Shannon (2002).

  21. Given the difficulties of modeling moral reasoning and the evidence that moral beliefs are very resistant to revision (Aramovich et al. 2011; Luttrell et al. 2016; Skitka 2010), especially in light of argument (Haidt 2001, 2010), it may be prudent for theories to treat the ordering of values (or whatever it is that is ordered at the highest level of the theory) as fixed before the case is argued. Each judge would have a constant ordering and ideally the theory would be able to apply that ordering to make predictions for cases before each judge. Realistically, one could use the widely accessible information regarding the judge’s party affiliation as a proxy for their value orderings. The theorist would categorize the pool of judges according to political affiliation and construct a partial value ordering for each political affiliation, see Graham et al. (2009, 2011) Hirsh et al. (2010), pp. 655–56, Janoff-Bulman (2009) and Janoff-Bulman et al. (2008) for evidence of such value orderings using very abstract values. The political affiliation of the judge would then be encoded as part of the facts of the current case and the corresponding value ordering would be available, if needed, to generate a prediction for the case outcome.

    Political affiliation represented in terms of less abstract attitudes or policy preferences does fairly well in predicting judicial decisions, see Heise (2002, sec. V.A.2) and citations therein, though these tend to be focused on very high level appellate cases that compose a small fraction of all cases. Still, if these attitudes seem resistant to argument, it would make sense to fix them within the theory instead of the more abstract moral values. Such a hybrid approach could allow the argumentative portion of the theory to deal with the mundane cases while the fixed values/attitudes can help resolve hard cases.

References

  • Al-Abdulkarim L, Atkinson K, Bench-Capon TJM (2013) From oral hearing to opinion in the US Supreme Court. In: Ashley KD (ed) Legal knowledge and information systems–JURIX 2013: the twenty third annual conference. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Al-Abdulkarim L, Atkinson K, Bench-Capon TJM (2015) Factors, issues and values: revisiting reasoning with cases. In: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, pp 3–12

  • Al-abdulkarim L, Atkinson K, Bench-Capon TJM (2016) Statement types in legal argument. In: Legal knowledge and information systems–JURIX 2016: the twenty-ninth annual conference, pp 3–12

  • Aleven V (1997) Teaching cased-based argumentation through a model and examples. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Aramovich NP, Lytle BL, Skitka LJ (2011) Opposing torture: moral conviction and resistance to majority influence. Soc Influ. doi:10.1080/15534510.2011.640199

    Google Scholar 

  • Araszkiewicz M (2011) Analogy, similarity, and factors. In: Proceedings of 13th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, ACM, New York, pp 101–105

  • Ashley KD (1990) Molding legal argument: reasoning with cases and hypotheticals. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashley KD (1991) Reasoning with cases and hypotheticals in hypo. Int J Man Mach Stud 34:753–796

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashley KD, Brüninghaus S (2009) Automatically classifying case texts and predicting outcomes. Artif Intell Law 17:125–165. doi:10.1007/s10506-009-9077-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashley KD, Walker VR (2013) Toward constructing evidence-based legal arguments using legal decision documents and machine learning. In: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, pp 176–180. http://doi.org/10.1145/2514601.2514622

  • Atkinson K, Bench-Capon TJM, Prakken H, Wyner A (2013) Argumentation schemes for reasoning about factors with dimensions. In: Ashley KD (ed) Proceedings of 26th international conference on legal knowledge and information systems (JURIX 2013). IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 39–48

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM (2002) The missing link revisited: the role of teleology in representing legal argument. Artif Intell Law 10:79–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM (2017) HYPO’ S legacy: introduction to the virtual special issue. Artif Intell Law. doi:10.1007/s10506-017-9201-1

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM, Bex F (2015) Cases and stories, dimensions and scripts. In: Rotolo A (ed) Legal knowledge and information systems–JURIX 2015: the twenty-eighth annual conference, vol 279. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 11–20. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-609-5-11

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM, Rissland EL (2001) Back to the future: dimensions revisited. In: Verheij B, Lodder AR, Loui RP, Muntjewerff AJ (eds) Legal knowledge and information systems–JURIX 2001: the fourteenth annual conference. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 41–52

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM, Sartor G (2003) A model of legal reasoning with cases incorporating theories and values. Artif Intell 150(1–2):97–143

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM, Ashley KD, Araszkiewicz M, Atkinson K, Bex F, Borges F, Wyner AZ (2012) A history of ai and law in 50 papers: 25 years of the international conference on ai and law. Artif Intell Law 20(3):215–319. doi:10.1007/s10506-012-9131-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berman DH, Hafner CD (1993) Representing teleological structure in case based reasoning: the missing link. In: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on AI and law (ICAIL), ACM Press, New York, pp 50–59

  • Bex F, Bench-Capon TJM, Verheij B (2011) What makes a story plausible? The need for precedents. In: JURIX 2011: the twenty-fourth annual conference, pp 23–32

  • Carey M (2011) Modeling authority commitments in two search and seizure cases. In: Proceedings of the thirteenth international conference on artificial intelligence and law. ACM Press, New York, pp 181–188

  • Chorley A, Bench-Capon TJM (2003) Developing legal knowledge based systems through theory construction. In: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on artificial intelligence and law—ICAIL’03, p 85

  • Chorley A, Bench-Capon TJM (2005) An empirical investigation of reasoning with legal cases through theory construction and application. Artif Intell Law 13(3–4):323–371. doi:10.1007/s10506-006-9016-y

    Google Scholar 

  • Garner BA (ed) (2004) Black’s law dictionary, 8th edn. West, St. Paul

    Google Scholar 

  • Grabmair M (2016) Modeling purposive legal argumentation and case outcome prediction using argument schemes in the value judgment formalism. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Grabmair M (2017) Predicting trade secret case outcomes using argument schemes and learned quantitative value effect tradeoffs. In: Proceedings of the 16th annual conference on artificial intelligence and law, ACM Press, New York

  • Graham J, Haidt J, Nosek BA (2009) Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. J Pers Soc Pychol 96(5):1029–1046. doi:10.1037/a0015141

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham J, Nosek BA, Haidt J, Iyer R, Koleva S, Ditto PH (2011) Mapping the moral domain. J Pers Soc Psychol 101(2):366–385. doi:10.1037/a0021847

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev 108(4):814–834

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J (2010) The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science 316(2007):998–1002. doi:10.1126/science.1137651

    Google Scholar 

  • Heise M (2002) The past, present, and future of empirical legal scholarship: judicial decision making and the new empiricism. Univ Ill Law Rev 4:819–850

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsh JB, Deyoung CG, Xu X, Peterson JB (2010) Compassionate liberals and polite conservatives: associations of agreeableness with political ideology and moral values. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 36(5):655–664. doi:10.1177/0146167210366854

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horty JF (2011) Rules and reasons in the theory of precedent. Leg Theory 17(1):1–33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horty JF (2017) Reasoning with dimensions and magnitudes. In: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, ACM Press, pp 109–118

  • Horty JF (2012) Reasons as Defaults. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Horty JF, Bench-Capon TJM (2012) A factor-based definition of precedential constraint. Artif Intell Law 20(2):181–214

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Janoff-Bulman R (2009) To provide or protect: motivational bases of political liberalism and conservatism. Psychol Inq 20(2–3):120–128. doi:10.1080/10478400903028581

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Janoff-Bulman R, Sheikh S, Baldacci KG (2008) Mapping moral motives: approach, avoidance, and political orientation. J Exp Soc Psychol 44(4):1091–1099

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jury Verdict Research Inc (2016) Personal injury valuation handbooks. LRP Publications, Horsham

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein RB (1991) In: Klein RB, Jordan W, Binder DF, Kestler J, Givens RA, Stern DN, Newburg HB (eds) Verdicts, settlements and tactics: a personal injury litigation reporter, vol 11, Shepard’s/McGraw-Hill

  • Luttrell A, Petty RE, Briñol P, Wagner BC (2016) Making it moral: merely labeling an attitude as moral increases its strength. J Exp Soc Psychol 65:82–93. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prakken H, Wyner A, Bench-Capon TJM, Atkinson K (2015) A formalization of argumentation schemes for legal case-based reasoning in ASPIC. J Log Comput 25(5):1141–1166

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni A (2014) Common-law judicial reasoning and analogy. Legal Theory 20(2):133–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni A (2015) An improved factor based approach to precedential constraint. Artif Intell Law 23(2):133–160. doi:10.1007/s10506-015-9166-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rissland EL, Ashley KD (2002) A note on dimensions and factors. Artif Intell Law 10(1–3):65–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon JE (2002) Medical malpractice: verdicts, settlements and statistical analysis. LRP Publications, Palm Beach Gardens

    Google Scholar 

  • Skitka LJ (2010) The psychology of moral conviction. Soc Pers Psychol Compass 4(4):267–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker VR (2007) A default-logic paradigm for legal fact-finding. Jurimetr J 47(2002):193–243

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker VR (2009) Plausibility schemas: templates for legal factfinding. In: ICAIL’09 proceedings of the 12th international conference on artificial intelligence and law, vol 1, no 516, pp 1–2. http://doi.org/10.1145/1568234.1568260

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for very patient and constructive comments. I’d also like to thank Richmond Thomason for comments on an earlier draft. Finally, I must thank Mary Rigoni for assistance in preparing this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Barrett, The Honors College, Arizona State University, Sage South 149, PO Box 871612, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Adam Rigoni

Authors
  1. Adam Rigoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam Rigoni.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rigoni, A. Representing dimensions within the reason model of precedent. Artif Intell Law 26, 1–22 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-017-9216-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-017-9216-7

Search

Navigation