Success Chances in Argument Games: A Probabilistic Approach to Legal Disputes (original) (raw)

Success chances in argument games

2007

The outcome of a legal dispute, namely, the decision of its adjudicator, is uncertain, and both parties develop their strategies on the basis of their appreciation of the probability that the adjudicator will accept their arguments or the arguments of their adversary. Costs and gains have to be balanced in light of this uncertainty in order to identify the most convenient strategies. This paper provides a probabilistic approach embedded into an argumentation framework to capture this uncertainty and its use to determine the expected utility to engage in a legal dispute.

Two Faces of Strategic Argumentation in the Law

In strategic argumentation players exchange arguments to prove or reject a claim. This paper discusses and reports on research about two basic issues regarding the game-theoretic understanding of strategic argumentation games in the law: whether such games can be reasonably modelled as zero-sum games and as games with complete information.

Legal Facts in Argumentation-Based Litigation Games

Argumentation, 2017

This paper analyzes legal fact-argumentation in the framework of the argumentation-based litigation game (ALG) by Xiong (Leg Sci 370(9):16–19, 2012). Rather than as an ontological one, an ALG treats a legal fact as a fact-qua-claim whose acceptability depends on the reasons supporting it. In constructing their facts-qua-claims, parties to an ALG must interact to maintain a game-theoretic equilibrium. We compare the general interactional constraints that the civil (a.k.a. ‘continental’) and common law systems assign, and detail what the civil, administrative, and criminal codes of mainland China require of the suitor (S), the respondent (R), and the trier (T) to establish their respective S-, R- and T-facts. We also offer an improved version of the legal syllogism.

Economic Methods for Lawyers (revised and extended English edition of Ökonomische Methoden im Recht)

Cheltenham, Edgar Elgar Publishing, 2015

Responding to the growing importance of economic reasoning in legal scholarship, this innovative work provides an essential introduction to the economic tools which can usefully be employed in legal reasoning. It is geared specifically towards those without a great deal of exposure to economic thinking and provides law students, legal scholars and practitioners with a practical toolbox to shape their writing, understanding and case preparation. The book’s clear focus on economic methods poses a refreshing change to conventional textbooks in this area, which tend to focus on content-related theories. Recognising that it is often difficult to derive adequate conclusions for legal arguments without first understanding the methodological limitations of economic studies, this book provides a comprehensive coverage of the most important economic concepts in order to bridge this gap. These include: • game theory • public choice and social choice theory • behavioural economics • empirical research design • basic statistics. Owing to its concise and accessible style, Economic Methods for Lawyers will provide an invaluable companion for legal scholars or practitioners who wish to utilise economic methods for developing legal argument.

Strategic argumentation: a game theoretical investigation

2007

Argumentation is modelled as a game where the payoffs are measured in terms of the probability that the claimed conclusion is, or is not, defeasibly provable, given a history of arguments that have actually been exchanged, and given the probability of the factual premises. The probability of a conclusion is calculated using a standard variant of Defeasible Logic, in combination with standard probability calculus. It is a new element of the present approach that the exchange of arguments is analysed with game theoretical tools, yielding a prescriptive and to some extent even predictive account of the actual course of play. A brief comparison with existing argument-based dialogue approaches confirms that such a prescriptive account of the actual argumentation has been almost lacking in the approaches proposed so far.

Argumentation Quantity and Quality: A Litigation Success Function

2015

Arguments are statements used to persuade someone or in support of a claim. However, these are not perfect and part are be exploited by the opponent to build its own argumentation. In this paper we present a litigation success function (LSF) that considers the quality of the plainti¤ and defendant arguments and preserves the ‡exibility and analytical characteristics of the "rent-seeking" contest success function.

Chapter 60 Game-theoretic analysis of legal rules and institutions

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Economic analysis of the common law when contracting costs are infinite 2.1. The basic model 2.2. Extensions within accident law 2.3. Other interpretations of the model 3. Is law important? Understanding the Coase Theorem 3.1. The Coase Theorem and complete information 2243 3.2. The Coase Theorem and incomplete information 3.3. A cooperative game-theoretic approach to the Coase Theorem 4. Garne-theoretic analyses of legal rulemaking 5. Cooperative game theory as a tool for analysis of legal concepts 5.1. Measures of voting power 5.2. Fair allocation of losses and benefits 6. Concluding remarks References Articles Cases *The support of the C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics is acknowledged. tAlfred and Gail Engelberg Professor of Law, New York University. The support of the Filomen D'Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund of the NYU School of Law is acknowledged. We thank John Ferejohn, Mark Geist:feld, Marcel Kahan, Martin Osbome and William Thomson for comments.

Between Evidence and Facts: An Argumentative Perspective of Legal Evidence

2020

In this paper, we will present an argumentative view of legal evidence. In an argumentation-based litigation game, the only purpose of the suitor (S) or the respondent (R) is to maximize their own legal rights while the purpose of the trier (T) is to maintain judicial fairness and justice. Different selections of evidence and different orders of presenting evidence will lead to different case-facts and even adjudicative results. The purpose of litigation is to reconcile a balance among the three parties S, R, and T.