Editorial: context, content and aims [Special Issue - Formal Approaches to Legal Evidence]

This special issue "Formal Approaches to Legal Evidence" of the Artificial Intelligence and Law, September 2001, Vol. 9, Issue 2-3, which was guest edited by Ephraim Nissan.

The Jama legal narrative part I: The JAMA Model and narrative interpretation patterns

For the purposes of starting to tackle, within artificial intelligence (AI), the narrative aspects of legal narratives in a criminal evidence perspective, traditional AI models of narrative understanding can arguably supplement extant models of legal narratives from the scholarly literature of law, jury studies, or the semiotics of law. Not only: the literary (or cinematic) models prominent in a given culture impinge, with their poetic conventions, on the way members of the culture make sense of the world. This shows glaringly in the sample narrative from the Continent-the Jama murder, the inquiry, and the public outcry-we analyse in this paper. Apparently in the same racist crime category as the case of Stephen Lawrence's murder (in Greenwich on 22 April 1993) with the ensuing still current controversy in the UK, the Jama case (some 20 years ago) stood apart because of a very unusual element: the eyewitnesses identifying the suspects were a group of football referees and linesmen eating together at a restaurant, and seeing the sleeping man as he was set ablaze in a public park nearby. Professional background as witnesses-cum-factfinders in a mass sport, and public perceptions of their required characteristics, couldn't but feature prominently in the public perception of the case, even more so as the suspects were released by the magistrate conducting the inquiry. There are sides to this case that involve different expected effects in an inquisitorial criminal procedure system from the Continent, where an investigating magistrate leads the inquiry and prepares the prosecution case, as opposed to trial by jury under the Anglo-American adversarial system. In the JAMA prototype, we tried to approach the given case from the coign of vantage of narrative models from AI.

The Jama legal narrative part II: A foray into concepts of improbability

In judicial decision making, the doctrine of chances takes explicitly into account the odds. There is more to forensic statistics, as well as various probabilistic approaches, which taken together form the object of an enduring controversy in the scholarship of legal evidence. In this paper, I reconsider the circumstances of the Jama murder and inquiry (dealt with in Part I of this paper: 'The JAMA Model and Narrative Interpretation Patterns'), to illustrate yet another kind of probability or improbability. What is improbable about the Jama story is actually a given, which contributes in terms of dramatic underlining. In literary theory, concepts of narratives being probable or improbable date back from the eighteenth century, when both prescientific and scientific probability were infiltrating several domains, including law. An understanding of such a backdrop throughout the history of ideas is, I claim, necessary for Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers who may be tempted to apply statistical methods to legal evidence. The debate for or against probability (and especially Bayesian probability) in accounts of evidence has been flourishing among legal scholars; nowadays both the Bayesians (e.g. Peter Tillers) and the Bayesio-skeptics (e.g. Ron Allen), among those legal scholars who are involved in the controversy, are willing to give AI research a chance to prove itself and strive towards models of plausibility that would go beyond probability as narrowly meant. This debate within law, in turn, has illustrious precedents: take Voltaire, he was critical of the application of probability even to litigation in civil cases; take Boole, he was a starry-eyed believer in probability applications to judicial decision making. Not unlike Boole, the founding father of computing, nowadays computer scientists approaching the field may happen to do so without full awareness of the pitfalls. Hence, the usefulness of the conceptual landscape I sketch here.

Film and literature in the legal classroom

The way in which law and lawyers are portrayed in popular film and literature is a fascinating subject not only for the social scientist but, more importantly, the lawyer and law student. Increasingly in law schools, films and classic literature with a legal theme are being used to identify various aspects of legal activity ranging from legal practice (i.e. intrinsic lawyer skills including legal argument, negotiation and advocacy) to various aspects of the legal process (e.g. the function of the judge and jury) as well as important elements of legal and ethical theory. This article focuses on the Law Through Film and Literature option which is offered to law students in the final year of their LLB (Hons) degree at Greenwich. The aim is to show how law-related film and literature can be a useful tool in the legal classroom, as well as providing some insights into how students have responded and developed as a result of their experiences on the course.

The legal pendulum swings back

Comments on the Court of Appeal judgment in Abou-Rahmah v Abacha on liability for dishonest assistance to a breach of trust. Discusses whether an objective standard should apply to determine whether the accessory acted dishonestly. Reviews case law, examining whether the combined test proposed in the House of Lords judgment in Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley is still good law.

Legal method and legal reflection: experiential learning in the law school

The two main themes of the conference centre around teaching experiences in legal education and theme and international and European perspectives in legal education.

Constructive notice and independent legal advice: a study of lending institution practice

Cases on when lending institutions will be put on inquiry as to circumstances giving rise to presumption of undue influence, and results of research on lending practice of residential mortgage lenders in light of case law. [From Legal Journals Index]

Lost in Translation, book review of Urban Landscape Perspectives

In Sofia Coppola's 2003 film Lost in Translation, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson's characters find themselves culturally stranded and oddly mismatched as an improvised tourist couple in contemporary Tokyo. This is an urban landscape that they cannot comprehend but only temporarily experience, in a fragmented and surreptitious way that allows no possible understanding and categorizations, but offers physical inclusion, emotional participation and momentary embeddedness.

Legal myth-making: Medea and the legal representation of the feminine ‘other'

The Law operates by, and through, the creation of ideal benchmarks of conduct that are deemed to be representative of the behavioural norm. It is in this sense that it could be contended that the Law utilises, and relies on, myths in the same way as do other disciplines, notably psycho-analysis. It is possible to go even further and argue that the use of a created narrative mythology is essential to the establishment of a defined legal benchmark of behaviour by which the female defendant is assessed, judged and punished. While mythology expresses and symbolizes cultural and political behaviour, it is the Law that embodies and prescribes punitive sanctions. This element represents a powerful literary strand in classical mythology. This may be seen, for instance, in Antigone’s appeal to the Law as justification for her conduct, as much as in Medea’s challenge to the Law though her desire for vengeance. Despite its image of neutral, objective rationality, the Law, in creating and sustaining the ideals of legally-sanctioned conduct, engages in the same literary processes of imagination, reason and emotion that are central to the creation and re-creation of myth. The (re-)presentation of the Medea myth in literature (especially in theatre) and in art, finds its echo in the theatre of the courtroom where wronged women who have refused to passively accept their place, have instead responded with violence. Consequently, the Medea myth, in its depiction of the (un)feminine, serves as a template for the Law’s judgment of ‘conventional’ feminine conduct in the roles of wife and mother. Medea is an image of deviant femininity, as is Lady Macbeth and the countless other un-feminine literary and mythological women who challenge the power of the dominant culture and its ally, the Law. These women stand opposed to the other dominant theme of both literature and Law: the conformist woman, the passive dupe, who are victims of male oppression – women such as Ariadne of Naxos and Tess of the D’Ubervilles – and who are subsequently consumed by the Law, much as Semele is consumed by the fire of Jupiter’s gaze upon her. All of these women, the former as well as the latter, have their real-life counterparts in the pages of the Law Reports. As Fox puts it, “these women have come to bear the weight of the cultural stereotypes and preconceptions about women who kill.”

Slicing issues in CAD translation to STL in rapid prototyping

The rapid prototyping (RP) process is being used widely with great potential for rapid manufacturing of functional parts. The RP process involves translation of the CAD file to STL format followed by slicing of the model into multiple horizontal layers, each of which is reproduced physically in making the prototype. The thickness of the resulting slices has a profound effect on the surface finish and build time of the prototype. The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of slice thickness on the surface finish, layering error, and build time of a prototype, as well as to show how an efficient STL file can be developed. Three objects were modeled and STL files were generated. One STL file for each object was sliced using different slice thicknesses, and the build times were obtained. Screenshots were used to show the slicing effect on layering error and surface finish and to demonstrate the means to a more efficient STL file. From the results, it is clear that the surface finish and build time are important factors that are affected by slice thickness

Placing biodiversity in ecosystem models without getting lost in translation

A key challenge to progressing our understanding of biodiversity’s role in the sustenance of ecosystem function is the extrapolation of the results of two decades of dedicated empirical research to regional, global and future landscapes. Ecosystem models provide a platform for this progression, potentially offering a holistic view of ecosystems where, guided by the mechanistic understanding of processes and their connection to the environment and biota, large-scale questions can be investigated. While the benefits of depicting biodiversity in such models are widely recognized, its application is limited by difficulties in the transfer of knowledge from small process oriented ecology into macro-scale modelling. Here, we build on previous work, breaking down key challenges of that knowledge transfer into a tangible framework, highlighting successful strategies that both modelling and ecology communities have developed to better interact with one another. We use a benthic and a pelagic case-study to illustrate how aspects of the links between biodiversity and ecosystem process have been depicted in marine ecosystem models (ERSEM and MIRO), from data, to conceptualisation and model development. We hope that this framework may help future interactions between biodiversity researchers and model developers by highlighting concrete solutions to common problems, and in this way contribute to the advance of the mechanistic understanding of the role of biodiversity in marine (and terrestrial) ecosystems.

Sign language in Spanish television. Study on reception

The present article analyses the preferences of the deaf who use sign language and are users of the TV interpretation service to sign language, as well as the characteristics with which TV channels provide that service in television in Spain. The objective is to establish whether the way in which the aforementioned accessibility service is provided matches the preferences of users or differ from them. The analysis presents the opinion on this service of the deaf that use the Spanish sign language as their first language for communication. A study has also been conducted on the programmes broadcast with sign language during week 10-16/03/2014. The main data collected reveal that the deaf are dissatisfied with broadcasting times. They ask for news programmes with sign language, they would rather have the interpretation carried out by deaf people who use sign language and they prefer that the interpreter is the main image on screen. Concerning the analysis of the programmes broadcast, the study shows that the majority of programmes with sign language are broadcast at night, they are entertainment programmes, the interpretation is carried out by hearing people who use sign language and that their image is displayed in a corner of the screen.