Peter Norvig: Video: The State of Modern AI

The Tech Chronicles: Video: Google’s Peter Norvig on the modern state of AI  SFGate (no date given).

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Is "Reliability" of Expert & Scientific Evidence Sufficient?

Source: Legal Informatics Blog, http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/edmond-on-the-law-commission-and-expert-evidence/ :

Edmond on The Law Commission and Expert Evidence

Professor Dr. Gary Edmond of the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law has published Is reliability sufficient? The Law Commission and expert evidence in international and interdisciplinary perspective (Part 1), International Journal of Evidence and Proof, 16(1), 30-65 (2012). Here is the abstract:

This article offers a critical appraisal of the Law Commission‘s Report, Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (2011), and related proposals for reform. Drawing upon interdisciplinary research and empirical studies from other common law jurisdictions it suggests that the introduction of a reliability-based admissibility standard for expert opinion evidence, even in conjunction with provision for recourse to court-appointed experts, is unlikely to generate the kinds of changes required to improve the quality of incriminating forensic science and medicine evidence or align criminal justice practice with espoused goals and principles.

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Off-Topic: In Memoriam: Richard Lugar: Statesman

The word is much overused, but Richard Lugar is a statesman. He should be proud for having contributed much to world peace and the world's welfare. And he should have been President. He also should have been a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a prize he would have gotten the old-fashioned way: by earning it. (Perhaps the latter achievement remains within his grasp?)



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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lugar:

"Much of Lugar's work in the Senate is toward the dismantling of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons around the world."

....

"Lugar has been influential in gaining Senate ratification of treaties to reduce the world's use, production and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1991, he initiated a partnership with then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn aiming to eliminate latent weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.[5] To date, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads. In 2004, Senators Lugar and Nunn were jointly awarded the Heinz Awards Chairman's Medal for their efforts.[48]"

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It is lamentable that a person who possibly helped to avert nuclear catastrophe(s) does not get adequate political credit for doing so. (What would "adequate credit" for such an enormous accomplishment be?)

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‎"In 1986, Lugar's leadership on legislation that imposed economic and political sanctions on South Africa marked a turning point in the U.S. response to apartheid and represents one of Lugar's finest moments in the Senate. He helped persuade the Reagan administration to embrace a more forceful role in opposing apartheid. That same year, he also helped persuade the Reagan administration to recognize Corazon Aquino as the winner of the disputed presidential election in the Philippines against incumbent Ferdinand Marcos." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/what-richard-lugar-accomplished-for-us-foreign-policy/256936/

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Sen. Lugar’s Remarks to Supporters, Prepared Follow-Up Statementwww.dicklugar.com:

‎

"If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

"This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.

"Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

"Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

"Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today – from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been diminished. I expect great things from my party and my country. I hope all who participated in this election share in this optimism." Source:http://www.dicklugar.com/2012/05/sen-lugars-remarks-to-supporters-prepared-follow-up-statement/

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Lotfi Zadeh on Misconceptions about Fuzzy Logic

Lotfi A. Zadeh	Mon, May 7, 2012 at 8:45 PM
Reply-To: bisc-group@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu To: bisc-group@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu
********************************************************************* Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) ********************************************************************* Dear members of the BISC [Berkeley Initiative on Soft Computing] Group: Sometimes labels are misleading. This applies to fuzzy logic. There are many kinds of logical systems, some going back to antiquity and some of recent vintage. Among them are:  Aristotelian logic, modal logic, deontic logic, multivalued logic, dynamic logic, probabilistic logic, etc. A common misconception is that fuzzy logic is a member of this list. This is not the case. Fuzzy logic is much broader than a logical system. Basically, fuzzy logic, FL, is a system of  reasoning, modeling and computation. FL has four principal facets. First, the relational facet, FLr. This facet is centered on fuzzy relations, fuzzy if-then rules, fuzzy systems analysis and  fuzzy decision-analysis. Most applications of fuzzy logic relate to this facet. The most visible  application area is fuzzy control. Second, the epistemic facet, FLe. This facet is concerned  with knowledge representation, linguistic variables, possibility theory, search and natural  languages. Third, the fuzzy-set-theoretic facet, FLs. This facet is focused on the theory of  fuzzy sets. Fourth, the logical facet, FLl. In this facet, and only in this facet, fuzzy logic is  viewed as a logical system. To differentiate between FL and FLl, FL and FLl are referred to  as fuzzy logic in a wide sense and fuzzy logic in a narrow sense, respectively. Today, when  we discuss fuzzy logic, it should be understood that we are talking about fuzzy logic in a wide  sense, unless stated to the contrary. Equating FL to its logical facet, FLl, is a common  misconception. This misconception is a source of a great deal of misunderstanding about  what fuzzy logic is and what it has to offer. In science and engineering, precision is respected and imprecision is not. What is widely unrecognized is that in many important applications of fuzzy logic imprecision is deliberate. The underlying rationale is the following. In most real-world problems there is some tolerance for imprecision. Fuzzy logic exploits this tolerance for imprecision through the use of words in place of numbers. Resulting in lower costs and greater simplicity. This is a key idea which underlies Computing with Words (CWW). This idea is one of the most important features of fuzzy logic, and it is unique to fuzzy logic. In CWW, concepts and techniques drawn from the realm of natural languages play an important role. Natural languages are intrinsically imprecise. In CWW, the accent is on problem-solving rather than on axiomatics and precisely defined concepts. There is a rationale for this attitude -- a rationale which is embodied in the Impossibility Principle. Briefly, the Impossibility Principle states that as the complexity of a system increases, a point is reached beyond which precision and relevance become incompatible. An example which I employed in my earlier messages, March 23, 24 and April 4, 2011, is the taxicab problem. The taxicab problem is a convenient platform for introduction of two basic concepts--the concepts of p-validity (provable validity) and f-validity (fuzzy validity). I hail a taxicab and ask the driver to take me from address A, where I am, to address B. There  are two versions: (a) I ask the driver to take me to B the shortest way; and (b) I ask the driver  to take me to B the fastest way. Abstractly, the street map is assumed to be a graph, and the  problem is to move from node A to node B. Each link (block) is assumed to be associated with  a constant, l, the length of the link, and a random variable, t, the traversal time. The traversal  time, t, is assumed to depend on the time at which the taxicab enters the link. Version (a) has a p-valid solution. The route that the driver chooses is an f-valid solution.  Version (b) has an f-valid solution which is the route that the driver takes. Version (b) does not  have a p-valid solution because we have no way of minimizing the sum of not-well-defined  random variables. In summary, Version (a) is a tractable problem whereas Version (b) is an  intractable problem. An analogy is helpful. Assume that I want to reach the peak of a mountain. I start by driving a  car toward the mountain. At some point, I cannot proceed further because of rough terrain. To  proceed further, I use a mule. Eventually, I reach a point beyond which I have to proceed on  foot. Using a car in the first leg of my trip is analogous to the use of tools which are provided by  traditional bivalent-logic-based mathematics. Classes are assumed to be crisp, that is, have  sharp boundaries. Let us refer to the tools which I use as Modality 1. The second leg is  analogous to the use of tools based on fuzzy logic. Classes are assumed to have unsharp  boundaries which are precisely defined via membership functions. Broadly speaking, we  employ what may be labeled fuzzy mathematics. Call it Modality 2. In the third leg, the  machineries of traditional mathematics and fuzzy mathematics cease to be effective. Classes  have unsharp boundaries which are not precisely defined. This is the world of everyday  reasoning. What we employ may be viewed as quasi-mathematics--a kind of mathematics  which I describe very briefly in my 2009 note on "Toward Extended Fuzzy Logic--A First Step,"  Fuzzy Sets and Systems 160, 3175-3181. Call this Modality 3. The taxicab problem, Version  (b), falls within Modality 3. Given a real-world problem, P, what modality does it fall into? The answer depends on how  P is modeled. Idealization of an intractable problem may make it a tractable problem. This is  common practice when we are faced with an intractable problem which we want to solve  through the use of traditional mathematics.     What I said above carries an important message. You should not assume that every problem  that we are faced with falls into Modality 1, that is, can be solved through the use of traditional  mathematics. Rigor and precision carry a price.     Regards,     Lotfi -- Lotfi A. Zadeh Professor Emeritus Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) Address: 729 Soda Hall #1776 Computer Science Division Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu Tel.(office): (510) 642-4959 Fax (office): (510) 642-1712 Tel.(home): (510) 526-2569 Fax (home): (510) 526-2433 URL: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/ BISC Homepage URLs URL: http://zadeh.cs.berkeley.edu/

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QJustice 2012

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The Surprising Perils of Human Identification

This is one of the best essays ever written on the logical and practical weaknesses of several methods of human identification -- and of methods of identification in general:
Erroll Morris What's in a Name? (Part 2) NYTimes (May 1, 2012)

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New Issue of International Journal of Evidence and Proof

Hat tip to Robert Richards for his alert to the following new issue of the

International Journal of Evidence and Proof

 

Volume 16 Number 1 2012
ISSN: 1365-7127  eISSN: 1740-5572

ARTICLE

The likelihood-ratio framework and forensic evidence in court: a response to R v T
Keywords: Bayesian; Bayes; Admissibility; Validity; Reliability
Geoffrey Stewart Morrison DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.390
(2012) 16 E & P 1
 ABSTRACT: In R v T the Court of Appeal concluded that the likelihood-ratio framework should not be used for the evaluation of evidence except 'where there is a firm statistical base'. The present article argues that the court's opinion is based on misunderstandings of statistics and of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence. The likelihood-ratio framework is a logical framework and not itself dependent on the use of objective measurements, databases and statistical models. The ruling is analysed from the perspective of the new paradigm for forensic-comparison science: the use of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence; a strong preference for the use of objective measurements, databases representative of the relevant population, and statistical models; and empirical testing of the validity and reliability of the forensic-comparison system under conditions reflecting those of the case at trial.

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Is reliability sufficient? The Law Commission and expert evidence in international and interdisciplinary perspective (Part 1)
Keywords: Law and science; Forensic science; Expertise; Admissibility; Daubert;Reform; Trial safeguards; Proof; Opinion; Judging
Gary Edmond DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.391
(2012) 16 E & P 30
ABSTRACT: This article offers a critical appraisal of the Law Commission's Report, Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (2011), and related proposals for reform. Drawing upon interdisciplinary research and empirical studies from other common law jurisdictions it suggests that the introduction of a reliability-based admissibility standard for expert opinion evidence, even in conjunction with provision for recourse to court-appointed experts, is unlikely to generate the kinds of changes required to improve the quality of incriminating forensic science and medicine evidence or align criminal justice practice with espoused goals and principles.

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Due process and the admission of expert evidence on recovered memory in historic child sexual abuse cases: lessons from America
Keywords: Expert evidence; Recovered memory; Due process; Historic child sexual abuse prosecutions; the United States; Ireland; England and Wales; Law Commission
Sinead Ring DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.392
(2012) 16 E & P 66
ABSTRACT: This article reviews the decisions of the US state courts on the admissibility of expert testimony on recovered memory in historic child sexual abuse prosecutions. Unlike their English and Irish counterparts, most US courts scrutinise the reliability of expert evidence on recovered memory. In examining the US decisions the article explores the challenges posed to the criminal process by the contested scientific status of recovered memory theory. It sets out due process arguments why expert evidence on the topic should not be admitted in a criminal trial.

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CASE NOTE

Expert evidence on the reliability of eyewitness identification-some observations on the justifications for exclusion: Gage v HM Advocate
Keywords: Expert evidence; Eyewitness identification; Admissibility; Common knowledge; Probative value
Andrew Roberts      93
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.393

CASE COMMENTARIES

Case Commentaries
Rosemary Pattenden      106
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.394

NOTICEBOARD

Noticeboard
Rosemary Pattenden      128
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.395
 

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Brain Endowments and the Interpretation of Natural Signs

We have known for some time that bits of evidence function as signs, or clues. (Sherlock Holmes knew this.) But we do not have a good sense of what it is in us or in the cosmos that enables us to take little bits of evidence and extract from them, possibilities, conjectures, and, even, conclusions (inferences) that reach far beyond the evidence that seems to inspire or provoke them. Now we may have some further support for a conjecture about part of the answer. The source of that support? Pigeons.

Birds are excellent navigators. Indeed, they are phenomenal navigators. But scientists have not been able to explain very well how birds, with their teeny-weeny brains, manage their navigational feats of derring-do. It has been suspected that the answer lies in the ability of birds to detect earth's magnetic fields. But no one has been able to demonstrate the part of the anatomy of birds that enables them to detect and interpret magnetic fields. Until now. See James Gorman, Study Sheds Light on How Pigeons Navigate by Magnetic Field NYTimes (April 26, 2012). It appears that there are "cells in a pigeon’s brain that record detailed information on the earth’s magnetic field." Id.
Stunning. So is there also reason to believe that human brains are also soft-wired with devices that facilitate the interpretation of tiny "evidentiary clues," sensory signals, or "natural signs"? It must be so, yes? The conscious mind -- explicit human thought -- is not by itself capable of extracting all the things (some of them "true," or, in any event, indicative or suggestive of true propositions) that human beings, like pigeons, manage to extract from the environment.
This may not be "intelligent design." But it is, in a way, a kind of harmony of the spheres, a harmony between the internal mechanisms of organisms -- such as pigeons and human beings -- and their "environment" (the cosmos). The only really peculiar thing about the human animal is that it is able, sometimes, to also deploy conscious thought -- explicit ratiocination -- to interpret eeny-weeny signs, or hints(?), in its environment.
Or so I speculate.

• Cf. the second part of my essay Are There Universal Principles or Forms of Evidential Inference? Of Inference Networks and Onto-Epistemology in J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, eds., Crime, Procedure, and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context (Hart Publishing, 2008) & William Twining, Philip Dawid & Dimitra Vasilaki, eds., Evidence, Inference and Enquiry (Oxford & British Academy, 2011).

The mighty pigeon...

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An Interesting Comment on Creative Scholarship

 David Brooks, The Creative Monopoly (April 23, 2012):

"As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship.

"Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a clerk, he went out and founded PayPal. Then he became an early investor in Facebook and many other celebrated technology firms. Somebody later asked him. 'So, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that Supreme Court clerkship?'"

"The question got Thiel thinking. His thoughts are now incorporated into a course he is teaching in the Stanford Computer Science Department. (A student named Blake Masters posted outstanding notes online, and Thiel has confirmed their accuracy.) 

"One of his core points is that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to think that whoever competes best comes out ahead. In the race to be more competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value.

"In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too."

"Now to be clear: When Thiel is talking about a 'monopoly,' he isn’t talking about the illegal eliminate-your-rivals kind. He’s talking about doing something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity. 'You’ve established a creative monopoly and everybody has to come to you if they want that service, at least for a time.'

"His lecture points to a provocative possibility: that the competitive spirit capitalism engenders can sometimes inhibit the creativity it requires.

"Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows."

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Woes of Law Teachers v. Woes of Scientists

You're a law teacher? You don't like the industrial model of scholarship? You don't like being judged by the quantity of the articles you place in "leading law reviews"? You wish that the originality of your work counted for more? Things could be worse: You could be a scientist:  Carl Zimmer, A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform, NYTimes (April 16, 2012).
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Reminder: Summer School on Law & Logic

Do not neglect to apply to the European University Institute-Harvard Law School (with Cardozo Law School as a co-sponsor) Summer School on Law & Logic.

 

Venue: Florence, Italy

Dates:  July 16-20, 2012

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Videos from Girona (Spain) 2011 Workshop on Standards of Proof and Scientific Evidence

University of Girona Workshop on Standards of Proof and Scientific Evidence, May 2011:

Larry Laudan, The Elementary epistemic arithmetic of the law II: the inadequate resources of moral theory for dealing with the criminal law

Susan Haack, Legal probabilism: An Epistemological Dissent

Michael S. Pardo, Relevance, Standards of Proof, and Evidence Theory

Ronald J. Allen, Standards of Proof and the Limits of Legal Analysis

Andrés Páez, Deciding Whom to Believe: Testimony as Evidence

Michele Taruffo, Applying scientific standards to social science and forensic evidence

Marina Gascón, Scientific Proof. A map of Challenges 

Paul Roberts, Was the baby shaken? Evidence, expertise and legal epistemology in english criminal trials

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The Legal Treatise in Modern America

Angela Fernandez & Markus D. Dubber, "Introduction: Putting the Legal Treatise in its Place,"  http://ssrn.com/abstract=2035134, pp. 19-21 (April 5, 2012) (footnotes omitted) (introduction to Law Books in Action: Essays on the Anglo-American Legal Treatise):

"One question that we do not address in great detail is what happened to the treatise as a form of literature in the twentieth century. Roscoe Pound recounted this evolution in The Formative Era in American Law, where he gave a steppingstone story, casebooks were the ‘necessary forerunner[s] . . . of the great treatises’, the ‘ultimate’ or ‘mega’ treatises. And those ‘great treatises’ paved the way for the American Law Institute Restatement projects.
"How did the United States get from this ‘Age of the Treatise’ to the study of doctrine being seen as passé by the late 1970s and early 1980s? Simpson identified the lack of enthusiasm for doctrine in the United States with the rise and effects of legal realism.
"There is clearly some truth to this observation, although there are many jurisdictions that had significant ‘realist’ or ‘sociological’ movements in which treatises continued to be produced.
"Treatise-writing was not just an outmoded vestige of ‘Langdellian formalism’, or ‘Classical Legal Thought’, if you prefer. Corbin, for instance, saw  his treatise as a Legal Realist alternative to Williston’s formalism, one that drew on inductive case analysis rather than deductive reasoning from higher principles to lower doctrines. Corbin’s treatise, after all, appeared only in 1950, long after Legal Realism had replaced formalism as the orthodoxy in American legal thought. (Even the first edition of Williston was published in 1920, at the very end of the ‘heyday’ of legal formalism.) Karl Llewellyn, who regarded Corbin as his ‘father in the law’, complained bitterly about his fellow Legal Realists’ dismissal of doctrinal analysis, and of treatise and Restatement writing in particular.
"Although no treatise-writer himself, Llewellyn, like Corbin, played a central part in the American Law Institute’s work. His Uniform Commercial Code, more explicitly than Corbin’s Restatement of Contracts, implemented the core Legal Realist claim that it was impossible to deduce the resolution of every issue from a set of principles by leaving space for local legal communities (in this case communities of merchants) to frame and resolve issues based on their experience and expertise.
"Farnsworth’s contracts treatise, first published in 1982, can be seen as a more explicitly normative, if not to say neo-formalist, alternative to Corbin’s Realist project. Prosser’s torts treatise, first published in 1941, too was more intellectually ambitious – and in particular animated by then-dominant Legal Realist thought – than it would appear in hindsight, after a series of editions that, as in all such works, tend to dilute the conceptual clarity of the original vision. That said, few if any legal scholars in the United States today wake up filled with a burning desire to devote their professional lives to the production of a treatise, great or not so great. While short treatlets survive on the margins of the American legal textbook market, neither students nor teachers, not to mention courts or practising lawyers or, for that matter, legislators or their aides, feel the need to bury their noses in heavy tomes of treatise learning. The Great Treatise very much has gone the way of the Great Men of the Law; just as the American Law Institute is not what it once was, and ALI giants like Herbert Wechsler no longer roam the halls of American law schools, so Model Codes or even Restatements no longer demand the attention of the producers or the consumers of legal literature in the United States.
"Other common law countries, such as Canada, however, continue to generate  treatises on the standard range of topics, including – even – in criminal law, a  subject long neglected in its Neighbour to the South. In the Mother Country, too, scholars and practitioners continue to churn out treatises, though the name may have fallen out of favour, perhaps so as not to scare off students and lawyers eager for a quick hit of doctrine. In civil law countries, say Germany, the production of comprehensive – and heavy – tomes of doctrinal analysis continues, both in the form of Lehrbücher and (often multi-volume) treatises-cum-code-commentaries, though here too shorter forms of legal educational literature have found a willing market.
"Given the treatise’s shape-shifting resilience over the past few centuries and its intimate connection with ideas of legal scholarship, legal education, and even of law itself, it would be foolish to count it out, now or in the future, in civil law countries or in the common law world. Perhaps even in an apparently hostile environment such as American legal scholarship, where ‘doctrine’ has for some time been a four-letter word, a fundamental and widespread reassessment of the very project of so-called interdisciplinary (‘law and’) legal scholarship may usher in a renaissance, or at least a reassessment, of the treatise in one form or another, as the disciplinary pendulum swings back from the ‘and’ to the ‘law’ and the analysis of law reasserts itself, both chastened and complicated in the wake of insights gleaned from decades of peering into law from the outside."
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HAL's Error

To err is human and non-human.

Is error in brain circuitry a precondition of imagination and creativity?
The human brain is soft-wired. The brain's wiring is mushy; it is not in the main metallic; if the brain is a machine, it is - in part - a biological machine, a biological mechanism. (The brain is also chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc. Yes?)
Is it the following the case?: The mushiness of the brain's circuitry helps to explain why non-deterministic human reasoning is possible, why human thoughts and reasoning can burst outside preexisting channels?
But to explain fully the possibility of non-deterministic (non-deductive?) human thought processes -- imagination and creativity -- is it also necessary to suppose that thoughts that burst outside of established circuitry produce a kind of somewhat disordered complexity and chaos?
I don't know. But I have a suspicion. (Yes.)

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Shaken Baby Syndrome

Carol J. Williams, Brown commutes sentence of woman convicted of killing grandson, LATimes (April 7, 2012).



In the courts:Cavazos v. Smith, 132 S.Ct. 2 (2011) (per curiam; Ginsburg, Breyer & Sotomayor, dissenting), reversing Smith v.Mitchell, 437 F.3d 884 (9th Cir. 2006). 
It would better if syndrome evidence of every kind were banished from the courtrooms of our land.


See the earlier post:

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Shaken Baby Syndrome

For an excellent -- but noncommittal -- review of the growing controversy over the "shaken baby syndrome," see Mark Hansen, Unsettling Science: Experts Are Still Debating Whether Shaken Baby Syndrome Exists ABA Journal (Dec. 1, 2011).

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It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

Summer School on Law & Logic

The European University Institute and Harvard Law School are hosting a summer school on law and logic this summer. Cardozo Law School is also a sponsor. The venue of the summer school is Florence, Italy; and the dates are July 16-20. See generally http://lawandlogic2012.wordpress.com/


The registration fee is 200 Euros. Instructions about the simple procedure for applying for admission to the school are at http://lawandlogic2012.wordpress.com/05-application/

The summer school's web site describes the general nature of the summer program this way:

The Summer School on Law and Logic is the first course ever to provide a comprehensive introduction to the uses of logic in the law. It combines an introduction to the basic methods of formal logic, a discussion of their application to the law, and an in-depth analysis of the logical structures of legal knowledge and legal reasoning.

It aims at providing postgraduate law students and legal professionals with knowledge of the methods of formal logic, and the ability to apply those methods to the analysis and critical evaluation of legal sources and legal arguments. We think that a background in formal logic is today an essential prerequisite for engaging in legal theory, and can be very useful also for developing doctrinal legal research, working in legal informatics, and, more generally, in the practice of law.

The Summer School introduces the use of logic in analysing sources of law (including statutes, cases, regulations, constitutional provisions) and legal arguments.

It includes the basics of propositional and predicate logic, as well as the the use of logic for capturing representing deontic and Hohfeldian modalities, analogical reasoning and inference to the best explanation.

It also addresses some aspects of non-deductive reasoning in law, such as defeasible reasoning, argumentation schemes, and inductive reasoning.

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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

I killed him, and he did it...

"The principal issue at trial was the identity of the person who killed Colleen Richardson-Luciano. The suspects were two, both of whom had equivalent opportunity to do so. Michael Luciano was one. James Cooper was the other. Luciano said it was Cooper. And Cooper could not deny it because Luciano killed him about a day after Colleen had been stabbed to death.

"A person charged with the murder of another is entitled to adduce evidence in response to the charge that shows or tends to show that another person committed the murder: R. v. McMillan  (1975), 7 O.R. (2d) 750  (C.A.), at p. 757, aff'd [1977] 2 S.C.R. 824; IA Wigmore on Evidence (Tillers  Rev.) at para. 139, pp. 1723-724."

R. v. Luciano,  [2011] O.J. No. 399; 2011 ON.C. LEXIS 14996; 273 O.A.C. 273; 267 C.C.C. (3d) 16; 2011 ONCA 89 (Ontario Court of Appeal, Feb. 1, 2011).

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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

Is a Bicycle a "Vehicle" - in Liberty Park?

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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

European University Institute-Harvard Law School Summer School on Law and Logic

There will be a summer school in Florence this summer on law and logic. The summer school is sponsored by Harvard Law School and the European University Institute and is meant for law students from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world. Cardozo School of Law (Yeshiva University) is also supporting this summer school.

No prior expertise in or formal study of logic is assumed or required. You must only have a seriously interest in the topic. The summer school is designed to introduce you to pertinent strands of logic.

Place: Florence

Dates: July 16-20, 2012

Cost: The registration fee for the summer school will probably be approximately 200 Euros.

Accommodations: EUI itself does not provide housing. However, EUI has arrangements with hotels for reduced-cost accommodations in Florence. See http://lawandlogic2012.

The official description of the summer school is as follows:

"The Workshop on Law and Logic will be held in Florence, Italy, at the European University Institute on 16-20 July 2012.

"This summer school is jointly hosted by the European University Institute, and the Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.) It is also supported by the Cardozo Law School (New York, N.Y., U.S.A.), Cirsfid-University (Bologna, Italy), and the University of Groningen (the Netherlands).

"The summer school is the first course ever to provide a comprehensive introduction to the uses of logic in the law. It combines an introduction to the basic methods of formal logic, a discussion of their application to the law, and an in-depth analysis of the logical structures of legal knowledge and legal reasoning.

"It aims at providing postgraduate law students and legal professionals with knowledge of the methods of formal logic, and the ability to apply those methods to the analysis and critical evaluation of legal sources and legal arguments. We think that a background in formal logic is today an essential prerequisite for engaging in legal theory, and can be very useful also for developing doctrinal legal research, working in legal informatics, and, more generally, in the practice of law.

"The program is held annually, during the summer, for a week or more, starting in the Summer of 2012."





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The workshop has a web site. At the time of this post, not all parts of the web site are operational. The web site will be fully operational within ca. five days. But even as it stands now, the web site provides useful information about the workshop. The link for registration will be activated in a few days. Exact descriptions of the workshop sessions will also be available in a few days.

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Premature Judgment; Popular (Mob?) Justice

1. Wouldn't it be advisable to wait until all the evidence comes in before we reach firm conclusions about what happened between Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman? It's hard enough for anyone to make reasoned and supportable inferences from a given body of evidence. It's all the harder for the people passing judgment on the event to do so if they and we know that they have only a portion of the available evidence.

2. I guess we should glad that American no longer has trial travesties and mob justice of the sort Hollywood so ably chronicled as happening in the South in the 1920s and 1930s. Today I'm sure we wouldn't tolerate attempts to influence the course of criminal justice by mass parades and pronouncements by prominent citizens expressing their firm belief in the criminal guilt of the projected defendant. We wouldn't approve of such things today, would we?

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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.