Using Toulmin argumentation to support dispute settlement in discretionary Domains

Arguing on the Toulmin Model: New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 289-301

  Zeleznikow, John ^a  

^a VICTORIA UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

alternative dispute resolution; Argumentation; discretionary reasoning; legal decision support systems; online dispute resolution; Stephen E. Toulmin

Indexed keywords

EID: 84885711719     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-4938-5_19     Document Type: Chapter

References (9)

1. The German Conceptualist movement assumes that judges are almost totally constrained by rules. Every attempt is made by adherents to this theory to determine one single correct meaning for every term in every rule in a legal system. Once this is achieved, legal reasoning reduces to the logical application of facts to rules. However, few legal academics or professionals accept this view of law today. Legal positivists believe that a legal system is a closed logical system in which correct decisions may be deduced from predetermined rules by logical means alone. Hart (1961) is a major proponent of legal positivism.
2. A neural network receives its name from the fact that it resembles a nervous system in the brain. It consists of many self-adjusting processing elements cooperating in a densely interconnected network. Each processing element generates a single output signal which is transmitted to the other processing elements. The output signal of a processing element depends on the inputs to the processing element: each input is gated by a weighting factor that determines the amount of influence that the input will have on the output. The strength of the weighting factors is adjusted autonomously by the processing element as data is processed.
3. Legal realists are jurisprudes for whom the reliance on rules is anathema. They argue that judges make decisions for a range of reasons that cannot be articulated or at least are not apparent on the face of the judgement given.
4. Phillips and Wilkins, Software Engineering Australia, JUSTSYS, Victoria Legal Aid, Australian Refugee Review Tribunal, University of Edinburgh and Glasgow Caledonian University.
5. Accessed January 4, 2006.
6. For a discussion of the BEST project see http://www.best-project.nl/ index.shtml; accessed January 1, 2006.
7. See Lodder and Zeleznikow (2005) for a detailed discussion of our Online Dispute Resolution Environment.
8. We cannot build a generic decision support system that advises upon BATNAs in all negotiation domains because, for example, family law disputes are very different from disputes about international treaties. Knowing about the context of the dispute is essential. It is possible, however, to build systems that allow disputants to communicate with each other and to build systems that advise upon trade-offs. See Bellucci and Zeleznikow (2006) for further details.
9. For example, in Australian Family, the interests of the children are paramount. So a Family Law judge can override a negotiated settlement between the parents if she does not believe the agreement meets the need of the children. This issue is discussed in further detail in Bellucci and Zeleznikow (2006).