Context Graphs for Legal Reasoning and Argumentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces context graphs, a structured, logic-based framework for legal reasoning that organizes knowledge into modular, interpretable contexts, enhancing argumentation and analogical reasoning capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel paradigm of context graphs that extend theory graphs with attack relations, applied to legal case modeling and reasoning.

Findings

Modeling of Popov v. Hayashi case using context graphs

Demonstration of analogical reasoning within the framework

Enhanced organization of legal knowledge and argumentation

Abstract

We propose a new, structured, logic-based framework for legal reasoning and argumentation: Instead of using a single, unstructured meaning space, theory graphs organize knowledge and inference into collections of modular meaning spaces organized by inheritance and interpretation. Context graphs extend theory graphs by attack relations and interpret theories as knowledge contexts of agents in argumentation. We introduce the context graph paradigm by modeling the well-studied case Popov v. Hayashi, concentrating on the role of analogical reasoning in context graphs.