Informatics and the Foundations of Legal Reasoning

This volume represents a collaboration between a wide range of disciplines and countries. 14 papers, together with a long analytical introduction by the editors, were selected from the contributions of legal theorists, computer scientists, philosophers and logicians who were members of an international working group supported by the European Commission. The group was mandated to work towards determining how far the law is amenable to formal modelling, and in what ways computers might assist legal thinking and practice. The book is the result of discussions held by the group over two and half years. It should help students and researchers from different backgrounds to focus on a common set of topics of increasing general interest. It embodies the results of work in progress and suggests many issues for further discussion. This should be a useful text for undergraduate and graduate courses in law, philosophy and computer science departments, as well as for those interested in the place of computers in legal practice, especially at the international level.