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1 A.I. & L. 1 (1992-1993)

handle is hein.journals/artinl1 and id is 1 raw text is: Artificial Intelligence and Law 1, 1 - 2, 1992                               1
© 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Printed in the Netherlands
From the Editors:
This issue inaugurates a new journal devoted to artificial intelligence and law, an interdis-
ciplinary field that combines one of the oldest human intellectual endeavors with one of
the youngest. (The oldest known legal text, the Code of Hammurabi, was created approx-
imately 3700 years ago, while the field of artificial intelligence can be dated from Alan
Turing's 1950 articlel which begins: 'I propose to consider the question 'Can machines
think?' and goes on to define what is now known as the 'Turing Test'.)
The field of artificial intelligence (Al) and law has grown from a few small projects
during the 1970's to a flourishing international research community today. As legal
scholars have recognized that Al offers a new and more precise methodology for repre-
senting jurisprudential theories, so also Al researchers have recognized the importance in
human reasoning of normative concepts such as duty, responsibility, fault and authority.
These communities are increasingly working together to create computational models of
the way a (somewhat) formalized structure of legal rules and precedents embodies the
norms of society, and the way people are able to manipulate this structure in creating
arguments and making decisions.
At the same time, practitioners and academics alike have recognized the potential of
AI-based information systems to revolutionize the day-to-day practice of lawyers, judges
and other legal decision makers. The adaptation of Al techniques, including expert
systems, planning, and natural language processing to the legal domain is a topic of
growing interest and excitement which both benefits from and offers challenges to funda-
mental scientific research.
The purpose of AI & Law is to provide a forum for sharing research results, problems,
and ideas about computational models of law and legal reasoning, applications of AI in
the legal domain, and the impact of legal Al systems on the legal profession and society.
Topics of current interest include:
Representing normative concepts and their interaction with other common-sense con-
cepts such as action, intention and causality (exemplified by the Jones and Sergot
article in this issue).
Defining 'open-textured' concepts through examples and/or prototypes, and reasoning
with knowledge defined in this manner.
Developing models of the adversarial process of legal argument, and the way that
process supports decision making (exemplified by the. Skalak and Rissland article in
this issue).
Creating innovative applications of Al for the legal domain.
Turing, A., 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', Mind, October 1950, pp. 433-460. (Reprinted in
Computers and Thought, E. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman, eds., McGraw-Hill, 1963.)

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