Dates: January 28-29, 2007.
Venue: Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, 55 Fifth Avenue (5th Ave. & 12th St.), New York (Manhattan), New York
First day (January 28, 2007):
9.00am-9.20am: Welcoming Comments (Tillers)
9.20am-11.00am:
Vern Walker, Visualizing the Dynamics around the Rule/Evidence Interface
in Legal Reasoning
Richard Sherwin & Neal Feigenson, Thinking beyond the Shown: Implicit
Inferences in Visual Evidence and Argument
Kevin Ashley, Comment
11.00am-11.20am: coffee break
11.20am-1.00pm:
Tim van Gelder, Rationale: A Generic Argument Mapping Tool
Chris Reed, Wigmore, Toulmin and Walton: The Diagramming Trinity and
their Application in Legal Practice
Dale Nance, Comment
1.00pm-2.00pm: lunch
2.00pm-3.40pm:
John L. Pollock, Some Puzzles about Defeasible Reasoning
Ron Loui, A Modest Proposal for Annotating the Dialectical State of
a Dispute
Richard Lempert, Comment
3.40pm-4.00pm: tea break
4.00pm-5.20pm:
Thomas F. Gordon & Doug Walton, Visualizing Arguments of the Carneades
Argumentation Framework
Bart Verheij, Virtual Arguments: On the Design of Argument Assistants
for Lawyers and Other Arguers
Marc Lauritsen, Comment
5.20pm-6.30pm: dinner
6.30pm-8.15pm:
Douglas N. Walton, Argumentation Theory for the Law of Evidence
Henry Prakken, Argument Visualisation Software for Crime Investigators:
Design and First Experiences
William Twining, Comment
Second day (January 29, 2007):
9.00am-10.40am:
John Lowrance, Graphical Manipulation of Evidence in Structured Arguments
John Josephson, Graphical Display of Evidence and Inference in a Prototype
System for Command-Post Information Fusion
10.40am-11.00am: coffee break
11.00am-1.00pm:
David Schum & Jon Morris, Law Comes to the Rescue of Intelligence
Analysis: Evaluating HUMINT
Philip Dawid & Amanda B. Hepler, Bayesian Networks for the Analysis of Evidence
Branden Fitelson, Argument Diagrams, Bayes Nets, and Independent Evidence
1.00pm-2.00pm: lunch
2.00pm-3.40pm:
Bruce Hay, Law's Visual Imagination
Priit Parmakson, Can Effective Visual Representations Be Produced Systematically?
Neal Feigenson, Comment
3.40pm-4.00pm: tea break
4.00pm-6.20pm:
Thomas Cobb, Argument Visualization as Jury Reform
Jennifer Mnookin, Visual and Expert Evidence: Rhetorical Connections
and Invisible Affinities
Samuel Solomon, Visual Storytelling - Contextualizing Evidence through
Visualization Taken from Real Cases
David Tait, Comment
6.20pm-6.35pm: Closing Comments (Prakken)
Conference officials:
Peter Tillers (Cardozo Law School): Conference chair; e-mail address: peter@tillers.net
Henry Prakken (Universiteit Utrecht & University of Groningen): Program
chair; e-mail address: henry@cs.uu.nl
Thomas D. Cobb (University of Washington, Seattle): Deputy program chair;
e-mail address: tomcobb@u.washington.edu
Jonathan Gottfried: Local affairs coordinator: Jonathan Gottfried; e-mail address: jgottfried@pobox.com"
Panelists:
Lecturer
University of Washington School of Law
Professor of Statistics
University College London
Professor
Quinnipiac University School of Law
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
University of California at Berkeley
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Melbourne
Senior Research Scientist
eGovernment Competence Center
Fraunhofer Institut fuer Offene Kommunikationssysteme; web log
Professor
Harvard Law School
Department of Statistical Science
University College London
Research Scientist
Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research
Computer Science and Engineering
Ohio State University
President
Capstone Practice Systems
Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology
University of Michigan Law School
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis
Program Director, Artificial Intelligence Center
SRI International
Professor
UCLA School of Law
Affiliate Faculty Member
School of Information Engineering and Technology
Systems Engineering and Operations Research
George Mason University
Professor
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Lecturer
Tallinn University
Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science
University of Arizona
Lecturer, Department of Information and Computing Sciences
Utrecht University
&
Professor of Law and ICT
Faculty of Law
University of Groningen
Senior Lecturer & Assistant Head of Research
University of Dundee
Professor
Systems Engineering & Operations Research
George Mason University
Professor & Director, Visual Persuasion Project
New York Law School
Chairman & CEO
DOAR Litigation Consulting
Senior Lecturer
School of Law
University of Canberra
Professor
Cardozo School of Law
Yeshiva University
Quain Professor of Jurisprudence emeritus
University College London Law Faculty &
Professor
University of Miami School of Law
Lecturer & Researcher
Artificial Intelligence
University of Groningen
Professor
Hofstra University School of Law
Professor of Philosophy
University of Winnipeg
Description of conference:
One of the largest problems faced by criminal investigators, litigators, paralegals, triers of fact, and others interested in disputes about factual questions in legal settings is the sheer mass of evidence available. It is often difficult to remember, retrieve, and interpret voluminous evidential information, and important relationships and inconsistencies may go unnoticed as a result. Tools that support the storage, retrieval, and interpretation of large masses of evidence would therefore be of great use.
Psychological studies have shown that people's ability to remember, retrieve, and interpret information is greatly enhanced when they organize it in a way that is meaningful to them. Scholars of the law of evidence have long suggested that graphical representations of evidential arguments and inferences could help people make sense of masses of evidence. As early as 1913, John Henry Wigmore claimed that his charting method promotes rational thinking about legal evidence. Wigmore had only pencil and paper to draw his cumbersome graphs. Today computer software may make it possible for almost anyone to construct useful graphical representations of arguments and inferences related to large collections of evidence. If such software were combined with with existing database, document management, and search technology, documentary evidence could be stored and retrieved in accordance with the user's view of a case. This would facilitate the transfer of a case file from one person to another because it would make it easier for recipients of files to grasp the signficance of the evidentiary details of a case.
Software for graphical representation of evidential argument is currently being investigated for use in various domains. Argument visualization software has been designed, for instance, to support the teaching of scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills (e.g., Belvedere, Reasonable, Araucaria, Convince Me), to support intelligence analysis, and to facilitate individual or collaborative problem solving (e.g., Questmap, SEAS). Moreover, current artificial intelligence research offers precise accounts of evidential reasoning and thus provides a clear semantics of graphical notations as well as computationall methods.
In the legal domain, fact investigators and litigators increasingly use software that supports the storage and retrieval of information in terms of conceptual and relational networks (e.g., Holmes 2, Analyst's Notebook). As yet, however, such tools offer little or no support for structuring thinking about information: existing software allows users to store evidentiary data in terms of events, objects, actors, and the relations among these things, but it does not allow users to represent how such data support or undermine factual hypotheses.
This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars and practitioners from fields such as law, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. The following topics and issues will be addressed:
- New and current graphical means for visualization of factual inference and proof.
- Semantics of graphical notations: what are the underlying theories of evidential reasoning, including jurisprudential, philosophical, psychological, rhetorical, logical, and mathematical theories?
- Software tools that are currently available or under development for graphical representation of factual inference and proof.
- Potential contexts for the use of such software (e.g., criminal investigation, intelligence analysis, trials, and law teaching).
- Can graphical representation of evidential argument support automatic evaluation of hypotheses?
- How can current insights into human-computer interactuions be exploited to increase the usefulness of such software; e.g., how can visual complexity generated by large masses of evidence be managed?
- Are there pertinent empirical studies and findings about real-world use of evidence-charting methods in legal and other contexts?
Drafts and abstracts of some or all papers will be made available online at http://tillers.net/conference.html shortly before the conference begins. Final versions of the papers will be published in Law, Probability and Risk in 2007 and 2008.
The public is warmly encouraged to attend the conference. Advance registration is not required and there is no registration fee. However, there will be a charge for any lunches or dinners that attendees elect to take at the site of the conference, at Cardozo Law School. If you are not a panelist and would like to join us for any lunches or dinners at Cardozo, please RSVP to the address shown below by January 15, 2007, and indicate which meals you wish to purchase, enclosing payment of $35 for each. Please make checks payable to Cardozo School of Law. Send payment to
Alisa Norr
Legal Secretary
Friedman Kaplan
Seiler & Adelman LLP
1633 Broadway, 46th floor
New York, NY 10019
United States
Hotel arrangements may be made through the conference travel agency:
Morris Park Travel Bureau
1745 Wiliamsbridge Road
Bronx, NY 10461
1-718-792-9850 or toll free 1-877-526-8844
Fax: 1-718-863-7121
Email: MPTVL@AOL.COM
