{"title":"How to ground a language for legal discourse in a prototypical perceptual semantics","authors":"L. McCarty","doi":"10.1145/2746090.2746091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2746090.2746091","url":null,"abstract":"In a pair of papers from 1995 and 1997, I developed a computational theory of legal argument, but left open a question about the key concept of a \"prototype.\" Contemporary trends in machine learning have now shed new light on the subject. In this paper, I will describe my recent work on \"manifold learning,\" as well as some work in progress on \"deep learning.\" Taken together, this work leads to a logical language grounded in a prototypical perceptual semantics, with implications for legal theory. The main technical contribution of the paper is a categorical logic based on the category of differential manifolds (Man), which is weaker than a logic based on the category of sets (Set) or the category of topological spaces (Top). The paper also shows how this logic can be extended to a full Language for Legal Discourse (LLD), and suggests a solution to the elusive problem of \"coherence\" in legal argument.","PeriodicalId":309125,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126959134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Curtotti, Eric C. McCreath, Tom Bruce, Sara S. Frug, W. Weibel, Nicolas Ceynowa
{"title":"Machine learning for readability of legislative sentences","authors":"Michael Curtotti, Eric C. McCreath, Tom Bruce, Sara S. Frug, W. Weibel, Nicolas Ceynowa","doi":"10.1145/2746090.2746095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2746090.2746095","url":null,"abstract":"Improving the readability of legislation is an important and unresolved problem. Recently, researchers have begun to apply legal informatics to this problem. This paper applies machine learning to predict the readability of sentences from legislation and regulations. A corpus of sentences from the United States Code and US Code of Federal Regulations was created. Each sentence was labelled for language difficulty using results from a large-scale crowdsourced study undertaken during 2014. The corpus was used as training and test data for machine learning. The corpus includes a version tagged using the Stanford parser context free grammar and a version tagged using the Stanford dependency grammar parser. The corpus is described and made available to interested researchers. We investigated whether extending natural language features available as input to machine learning improves the accuracy of prediction. Among features evaluated are those from the context free and dependency grammars. Letter and word ngrams were also studied. We found the addition of such features improves accuracy of prediction on legal language. We also undertake a correlation study of natural language features and language difficulty drawing insights as to the characteristics that may make legal language more difficult. These insights, and those from machine learning, enable us to describe a system for reducing legal language difficulty and to identify a number of suggested heuristics for improving the writing of legislation and regulations.","PeriodicalId":309125,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132962500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thou shalt is not you will","authors":"Guido Governatori","doi":"10.1145/2746090.2746105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2746090.2746105","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we discuss some reasons why temporal logic might not be suitable to model real life norms. To show this, we present a novel deontic logic contrary-to-duty/derived permission paradox based on the interaction of obligations, permissions and contrary-to-duty obligations. The paradox is inspired by real life norms.","PeriodicalId":309125,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127576353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}