Skip to main content
Log in

Issue spotting in CHASER

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence and Law Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

For any system that uses previous experience to solve problems in new situations, it is necessary to identify the features in the situation that should match features in the previous cases through some process ofsituation analysis. In this paper, we examine this problem in the legal domain, where lawyers know it asissue spotting. In particular, we present an implementation of issue spotting in CHASER, a legal reasoning system that works in the domain of tort law.

This approach is a compromise between generality and efficiency, and is applicable to a range of problems and domains besides legal reasoning. In particular, it presents a principled way to use multiple cases for a single problem by exploiting the inherent structure present in many domains.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • American Law Institute. 1981.Restatement of the Law, Second: Contracts, 2d. American Law Institute Publishers, St. Paul, MN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashley, K. D. 1991.Modeling Legal Argument: Reasoning with Cases and Hypotheticals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Branting, L. K. 1991. Reasoning with Portions of Precedents. In Proceedings ofThe Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. Oxford, ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charniak, E. & McDermott, D. 1985.Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cuthill, B. B. 1991. A Retrieval Strategy for Cross-Context Legal Cases. In Proceedings ofThe 4th UNB Artificial Intelligence Symposium. Fredericton, NB, Canada.

  • Cuthill, B. B. 1992. Situation Analysis, Precedent Retrieval, and Cross-context Reminding in Case-Based Reasoning. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut. (Technical report No. CSE-TR-92-3).

  • Davis, E. 1990.Representations of Commonsense Knowledge. San Mateo, CA: Morgan-Kauffmann Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delaney, J. 1987.Learning Legal Reasoning. Bogota, NJ: John Delaney Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, A. von der Leith 1987.An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Legal Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbons, H. 1990.The Death of Jeffrey Stapleton: Exploring the Way Lawyers Think. Concord, NH: Franklin Pierce Law Center. (manuscript).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hafner, C. 1987. Conceptual Organization of Case Law Knowledge Bases. In Proceedings ofThe First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. Boston: ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hafner, C. 1990. An Integrated Model of Deep Structure and Surface Structure in Legal Reasoning. In Proceedings ofThe AAAI Workshop on AI and Legal Reasoning.

  • McCarty, L. Thorne. 1989 A Language for Legal Discourse: i. Basic Features. In Proceedings ofThe Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. Vancouver: ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCarty, L. Thorne. 1990. A I and Law: How to Get There from Here. In Proceedings ofThe AAAI Workshop on AI and Legal Reasoning.

  • Prosser, W. L. 1971.Handbook of the Law on Torts. St. Paul, MN. West Publishing Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prosser, W. L. Wade, J. W., & Schwartz, V. E., 1988.Cases and Materials on Torts. Westbury, NY: The Foundation Press, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rissland, E. L. & Skalak, D. B. 1989. Combining Case-Based and Rule-Based Reasoning: A Heuristic Approach. In Proceedings ofThe Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 524–530, Detroit, MI.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation, grant IRI-9110961.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cuthill, B., McCartney, R. Issue spotting in CHASER. Artif Intell Law 2, 83–111 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00871758

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00871758

Key words

Navigation