Logical Judges Challenge Human Judges on the Strange Case of B.C.-Valjean

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a Prolog-based logical judge reasoning on a real armed robbery case to magistrates, showcasing an innovative automated reasoning tool in Italy and internationally.

Contribution

It introduces a practical demonstration of a logical judge for legal reasoning, engaging magistrates and providing feedback on its applicability in judicial contexts.

Findings

First large-scale demonstration of automated legal reasoning in Italy

Positive feedback from magistrates on logical judge's potential

Successful reasoning on a real case previously judged by humans

Abstract

On May 12th, 2020, during the course entitled Artificial Intelligence and Jurisdiction Practice organized by the Italian School of Magistracy, more than 70 magistrates followed our demonstration of a Prolog logical judge reasoning on an armed robbery case. Although the implemented logical judge is just an exercise of knowledge representation and simple deductive reasoning, a practical demonstration of an automated reasoning tool to such a large audience of potential end-users represents a first and unique attempt in Italy and, to the best of our knowledge, in the international panorama. In this paper we present the case addressed by the logical judge - a real case already addressed by a human judge in 2015 - and the feedback on the demonstration collected from the attendees.