Law is of vital importance, touching the lives of all people. The effect of law also matters a great deal, and the costs of mistakes can be serious. In order to comply with the law it must be understood by those it affects, and to be accepted it must be explained in terms that are comprehensible by those to whom they are
addressed. Moreover, the law must be applied in a way which is transparent and accountable.
The original use of logic in law was for representation of law in a clear and unambiguous manner. In these approaches, reasoning was seen as simply deduction from the resulting formal representation. This conception, adopting a narrow view of logic, sees reasoning as following from representation: once the meaning of the concepts has been formalized, the notion of valid inference follows automatically, so that the main task is to develop sound and complete proof procedures. In other words: representing the law comes first; the reasoning follows from it and can be done within a traditional conception of logic. This approach was popularized, which showed the strengths of the approach by applying it to a piece of new legislation in
which issues of interpretation were minimized, but the success here was not readily transferable to other areas.
Attempts to build on this work led to the realization that many aspects of legal reasoning go beyond the semantics of traditional logical approaches. When a law is framed, the legislators are well aware that they cannot envisage all the circumstances in which it will be applied. Typically they will enunciate a general norm, capturing the essence of the proposed measure, and then qualify this with a series of exceptions. Furthermore they use abstract concepts, intended to be interpreted in the light of the concrete facts of the cases that are brought before the court. This leads to uncertainty and disagreement, in situations moreover, where there are inevitably conflicts of interest. Therefore, to apply to law, the logic must be robust in the face of exceptions,
conflicting rules, vagueness, and open texture and recognize the possibility of rational disagreement.
Some of these features primarily led to innovations in approaches to reasoning, others made it necessary to consider context, procedure, interaction and other dynamic aspects. The need to handle these features has also led to a broader conception of logic. This is essentially a special case of a general development in logic. For instance, speaks (in addition to a computational turn) of first a cognitive turn in logic, in which greater interest is paid how reasoning is actually practiced and then an interactive turn, in which the reasoning is considered in the context of the behavior of intelligent agents engaged in social interaction, with meaning emerging from these communicative exchanges.
addressed. Moreover, the law must be applied in a way which is transparent and accountable.
The original use of logic in law was for representation of law in a clear and unambiguous manner. In these approaches, reasoning was seen as simply deduction from the resulting formal representation. This conception, adopting a narrow view of logic, sees reasoning as following from representation: once the meaning of the concepts has been formalized, the notion of valid inference follows automatically, so that the main task is to develop sound and complete proof procedures. In other words: representing the law comes first; the reasoning follows from it and can be done within a traditional conception of logic. This approach was popularized, which showed the strengths of the approach by applying it to a piece of new legislation in
which issues of interpretation were minimized, but the success here was not readily transferable to other areas.
Attempts to build on this work led to the realization that many aspects of legal reasoning go beyond the semantics of traditional logical approaches. When a law is framed, the legislators are well aware that they cannot envisage all the circumstances in which it will be applied. Typically they will enunciate a general norm, capturing the essence of the proposed measure, and then qualify this with a series of exceptions. Furthermore they use abstract concepts, intended to be interpreted in the light of the concrete facts of the cases that are brought before the court. This leads to uncertainty and disagreement, in situations moreover, where there are inevitably conflicts of interest. Therefore, to apply to law, the logic must be robust in the face of exceptions,
conflicting rules, vagueness, and open texture and recognize the possibility of rational disagreement.
Some of these features primarily led to innovations in approaches to reasoning, others made it necessary to consider context, procedure, interaction and other dynamic aspects. The need to handle these features has also led to a broader conception of logic. This is essentially a special case of a general development in logic. For instance, speaks (in addition to a computational turn) of first a cognitive turn in logic, in which greater interest is paid how reasoning is actually practiced and then an interactive turn, in which the reasoning is considered in the context of the behavior of intelligent agents engaged in social interaction, with meaning emerging from these communicative exchanges.
No comments:
Post a Comment