(second call for applications) PhD position Artificial Intelligence and Forensic Science (Utrecht University; 1,0 fte) Job description This PhD position is part of the project "Designing and Understanding Forensic Bayesian Networks with Arguments and Scenarios" that is funded by the Netherlands Institute for Scientific Research in the Forensic Science program (www.nwo.nl/forensicscience). The project is a cooperation of the University of Groningen (Department of Artificial Intelligence) and Utrecht University (Department of Information and Computing Sciences) supported by partners from forensic legal practice. In order to prevent miscarriages of justice such as the infamous Lucia de Berk case, the communication between forensic statisticians, crime investigators and lawyers about statistical evidence should be improved. It is well-known that lawyers and other non-experts in statistics often make serious mistakes when confronted with statistical evidence, while there is ample evidence that lawyers tend to think in terms of arguments and scenarios. Therefore the project aims to develop methods for supporting argumentation- and narrative-based communication about statistical evidence. Both the design and the understanding of models of evidence will be investigated. This study will be carried out in two subprojects, addressing, respectively, argumentation and narrative techniques. Both subprojects take the statistical formalism of Bayesian Networks as point of departure. In the subproject performed at Utrecht University, argumentation techniques for the design and understanding of models of evidence will be developed, based on logical models of argumentation developed in Artificial Intelligence. The project is the first that addresses the communicative gap between forensic statisticians, crime investigators and lawyers, by combining Bayesian Networks with Artificial Intelligence models of scenario construction and argumentation. On request, we can send you the full plan for the project. In that case, and for other questions, please contact Prof.dr. Henry Prakken. Requirements A successful candidate has a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, or a related field, and has an interest in formal research in argumentation, narrative techniques and Bayesian Networks, and their application in forensic contexts. Conditions of employment Utrecht University offers a salary of € 2,042 gross per month in the first year up to a maximum of 2,612 gross per month in the final year. The appointment is for a period of four years, which should be finished with a PhD examination. The full time appointment is temporary for 1.5 years with the perspective of prolongation for another 2.5 years. After the first year, there will be an evaluation of the feasibility of successful completion of the PhD thesis within the next three years. You and your supervisors will make up a plan for additional education and supervising that is specific to your needs. How to apply: Send a cover letter (with professional goals and a statement of interest), a curriculum vitae and two letters of recommendation (PDF format) to the job application portal before March 17th, although applications received after the deadline may be considered. Starting date: as soon as possible. Organisation The PhD student will be based at Utrecht University (Faculty of Science, Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Intelligent Systems group). The group has a world-class reputation in the fields of Intelligent Agents, Multi-Agent systems, Argumentation, AI & law, and Bayesian Networks. Daily supervision will be performed by Dr. B. Verheij (principal investigator), Prof.dr.mr. H. Prakken and Dr. S. Renooij. Additional information Prof. Dr. Henry Prakken H.Prakken@uu.nl Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University More information about the project: www.ai.rug.nl/~verheij/nwofs More information about employer Utrecht University on AcademicTransfer. Direct link to this job opening: http://www.academictransfer.com/employer/UU/vacancy/13124/lang/en/
PhD position AI & Forensic Science – Utrecht University
February 27th, 2012 by henry No comments »DEON 2012: Call for Papers
January 6th, 2012 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »
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The biennial DEON conferences are designed to promote interdisciplinary cooperation amongst scholars interested in linking the formal-logical study of normative concepts and normative systems with computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, organization theory and law.
In addition to these general themes, DEON2012 will encourage a special focus on the topic:
Deontic Logic and Social Choice
There have been nine previous DEON conferences: Amsterdam, December 1991; Oslo, January 1994; Sesimbra, January 1996; Bologna, January 1998; Toulouse, January 2000; London, May 2002; Madeira, May 2004; Utrecht, July 2006, Luxembourg, July 2008, Fiesole 2010.
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issues of Journal of Logic and Computation, and/or the Journal of Applied Logic.
General Themes
The Program Committee invites papers concerned with the following topics:
•the logical study of normative reasoning, including formal systems of deontic logic, defeasible normative reasoning, logics of action, logics of time, and other related areas of logic;
•the formal analysis of normative concepts and normative systems;
•the formal specification of aspects of norm-governed multi-agent systems and autonomous agents, including (but not limited to) the representation of rights, authorization, delegation, power, responsibility and liability;
•normative aspects of protocols for communication, negotiation and multi-agent decision making;
•the formal representation of legal knowledge;
•the formal specification of normative systems for the management of bureaucratic processes in public or private administration;
•applications of normative logic to the specification of database integrity constraints
Deontic Logic and Social Choice
DEON2012’s special theme is “Deontic Logic and Social Choice”. Topics of interest in this special theme include, but are not limited to:
•Normative system selection and optimization
•Merging and aggregation of norms
•Compliance and enforcement strategies for norms
•Game theoretic aspects of deontic reasoning
•Norms, culture and and shared values
•Violation detection and norm creation mechanisms
•Simulation of dynamics in normative systems
•Emergence of norms
•Norm change
We welcome both theoretical work (formal models, representations, logics, specifications, verification) and implementation-oriented work (architectures, programming languages, design models, simulations, prototype systems) on these specific topics.
Submission Details
Authors are invited to submit an original, previously unpublished, research paper pertaining to any of these topics. The paper should be in English, and should be no longer than 15 pages when formatted according the LNCS specifications (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). The first page should contain the full name and contact information for at least one of the authors, and it should contain an abstract of no more than ten lines. Authors should submit their papers electronically using the submission system at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=deon2012
Each submitted paper will be carefully peer-reviewed by a panel of PC member based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition and relevance for the conference.
For each accepted paper, at least one author is required to register for the conference and should plan to present the paper.
Publication
The selected papers will be published in book form in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (approval pending). Copies of the conference proceedings, will be provided to all participants.
Important Dates
Abstract Submission Deadline: February 27, 2012
Paper Submission Deadline: March 5, 2012
Notification: April 9, 2012
Camera Ready: April 23, 2012
Program Chairs
Thomas Agotnes, University of Bergen
Dag Elgesem, University of Bergen
Jan Broersen, Utrecht University
11th International Conference on Deontic Logic in Computer Science
16-18 June 2012
University of Bergen, Norway
The biennial DEON conferences are designed to promote interdisciplinary cooperation amongst scholars interested in linking the formal-logical study of normative concepts and normative systems with computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, organization theory and law.
In addition to these general themes, DEON2012 will encourage a special focus on the topic: Deontic Logic and Social Choice
There have been nine previous DEON conferences: Amsterdam, December 1991; Oslo, January 1994; Sesimbra, January 1996; Bologna, January 1998; Toulouse, January 2000; London, May 2002; Madeira, May 2004; Utrecht, July 2006, Luxembourg, July 2008, Fiesole 2010.
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issues of Journal of Logic and Computation, and/or the Journal of Applied Logic.
General Themes
The Program Committee invites papers concerned with the following topics:
- the logical study of normative reasoning, including formal systems of deontic logic, defeasible normative reasoning, logics of action, logics of time, and other related areas of logic;
- the formal analysis of normative concepts and normative systems;
- the formal specification of aspects of norm-governed multi-agent systems and autonomous agents, including (but not limited to) the representation of rights, authorization, delegation, power, responsibility and liability;
- normative aspects of protocols for communication, negotiation and multi-agent decision making;
- the formal representation of legal knowledge;
- the formal specification of normative systems for the management of bureaucratic processes in public or private administration;
- applications of normative logic to the specification of database integrity constraints
Deontic Logic and Social Choice
DEON2012’s special theme is “Deontic Logic and Social Choice”. Topics of interest in this special theme include, but are not limited to:
- Normative system selection and optimization
- Merging and aggregation of norms
- Compliance and enforcement strategies for norms
- Game theoretic aspects of deontic reasoning
- Norms, culture and and shared values
- Violation detection and norm creation mechanisms
- Simulation of dynamics in normative systems
- Emergence of norms
- Norm change
We welcome both theoretical work (formal models, representations, logics, specifications, verification) and implementation-oriented work (architectures, programming languages, design models, simulations, prototype systems) on these specific topics.
Submission Details
Authors are invited to submit an original, previously unpublished, research paper pertaining to any of these topics. The paper should be in English, and should be no longer than 15 pages when formatted according the LNCS specifications (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). The first page should contain the full name and contact information for at least one of the authors, and it should contain an abstract of no more than ten lines. Authors should submit their papers electronically using the submission system at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=deon2012
Each submitted paper will be carefully peer-reviewed by a panel of PC member based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition and relevance for the conference.
For each accepted paper, at least one author is required to register for the conference and should plan to present the paper.
Publication
The selected papers will be published in book form in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (approval pending). Copies of the conference proceedings, will be provided to all participants.
Important Dates
Abstract Submission Deadline: February 27, 2012
Paper Submission Deadline: March 5, 2012
Notification: April 9, 2012
Camera Ready: April 23, 2012
Program Chairs
Thomas Agotnes, University of Bergen
Dag Elgesem, University of Bergen
Jan Broersen, Utrecht University
JURIX 2011 Deadline extended to September 9
September 4th, 2011 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »The submission deadline for the JURIX 2011 Conference has been extended until the 9th of September.
See the conference website for more details: http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/JURIX2011/
Dutch Legislation Published as CEN MetaLex and Linked Open Data
August 25th, 2011 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »The Leibniz Center for Law of the University of Amsterdam has made all Dutch legislation available as CEN MetaLex and Linked Open Data through the MetaLex Document Server portal (MDS). “The XML source documents currently made available by the Dutch government are simply not good enough”, says Rinke Hoekstra, researcher at the Leibniz Center, and the Knowledge Representation group of the VU University Amsterdam.
The MetaLex Document Server improves over the XML API of the official portal by:
- Providing persistent, versioned identifiers of all elements of regulations.
- Maintaining source XML for all versions of legislation since May 2011, rather than only the latest version.
- All metadata is published as RDF Linked Data, is linked to the original legislative sources, and uses standard vocabularies such as the MetaLex Ontology, Dublin Core, Open Provenance Model Vocabulary, Simple Event Model,FOAF, etc.
- All documents and metadata are available through ‘content negotiation’: content can be retrieved by using the URI (identifier) of an element as a URL.
- Metadata is accessible through a SPARQL endpoint
- Citations between regulations are made available in a format suitable for social network analysis (Pajek/Gephi)
- A generic conversion script for transforming any legislative XML to CEN MetaLex
For more information, have a look at the presentation on slideshare, or contact Rinke Hoekstra directly.
A report on this work will be published as part of the proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2011: “Rinke Hoekstra. The MetaLex Document Server – Legal Documents as Versioned Linked Data”
AICOL 2011: Extended Deadline
June 6th, 2011 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »
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http://www.aicol.eu
EXTENDED DEADLINE at June 15th and FULL DAY WORKSHOP
Full day Workshop of the
XXV. World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, 15-16 AUGUST 2011
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Following many requests for an extension of the AICOL deadline, the Program committee has decided that 15th June 2011, will be the latest date on which full papers can be submitted: Note that this deadline cannot be further extended, since the PC needs to have the time for a good review process.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the workshop is to offer effective support for the exchange of knowledge and methodological approaches between scholars from different scientific fields, by highlighting their similarities and differences.
We are expecting to have contributions that are able to capture this interdisciplinary aspect and prepare the scientific community to a common ground beyond the state of the art of any individual discipline.
TOPICS
Some not exaustive topics are:
- Law and Science
- Law and Cognitive Science
- Law and Complexity Theory
- Complex Systems
- Legal Theory
- Legal Culture
- Computer Ethics
- Artificial Societies
- Argumentative Frameworks
- Legal Ontologies
- Legal Concepts
- Legal Thesauri
- Taxonomies
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Legal Knowledge Acquisition
- Legal Knowledge Representation
- Knowledge Management
- Cognitive schemas
- Law and Robotics
- Law and Mathematics
- Legal Graphic Representation
- Game Theory
- Formalization of Legal Systems and Norms
- Rules and Standards
- Agreement technologies
- Electronic Institutions
- Legal Information Retrieval
- Online Dispute Resolution
- Trends in e-Discovery, e-Courts, e-Administration
- Users’ studies
See the call for papers in the web site for more details. HTTP://WWW.AICOL.EU/
IMPORTANT DATES
Paper submission: FIRM ULTIMATE DEADLINE! June 12th 2011
Peer Review Communications: July 11th, 2011
Camera Ready: July 31th, 2011
AICOL Workshop: August 16th, 2011
Publication: November/December 2011 (LNAI volume)
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Authors are invited to submit original contributions of practical relevance and technical rigor in the field, experience reports and show case/use case demonstrations of effective, practical, deployable rule-based technologies or applications in distributed environments. Papers must be in English and may be submitted at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aicol2011
Full Papers (15 pages in the proceedings) Short Papers (8 pages in the proceedings) Min.3000 words and max. 15000 words.
Please upload all submissions as PDF files in LNCS format (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). To ensure high quality, submitted papers will be carefully peer-reviewed by at least 3 PC members based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition.
PUBLICATIONS
The selected papers will be published in book form in the Springer LNAI Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. The publication will be released in December, following the Springer process.
PROGRAM CHAIRS
Daniële Bourcier (CERSA-CNRS, Paris, France)
Pompeu Casanovas (UAB Institute of Law and Technology, Barcelona, Spain)
Monica Palmirani (CIRSFID – University of Bologna, Italy)
Ugo Pagallo (University of Turin, Italy)
Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute and University of Bologna, Italy)
JURIX 2011: Call for Papers
June 2nd, 2011 by henry 1 comment »
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Call for Papers: JURIX 2011
The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
University of Vienna, Austria, 14th-16th December 2011
http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/JURIX2011/
The JURIX conference has been running annually for over 20 years and provides an international forum for both academics and practitioners in the field of legal informatics to meet and share their research and ideas to advance the field of legal knowledge systems.
The 24th edition of JURIX will be hosted by the University of Vienna. We invite submission of original papers on the advanced management of legal information and knowledge, covering foundations, methods, tools, systems and applications for the following (non-exhaustive) list of topics:
- Support for lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation;
- Support for the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation;
- Support for the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases;
- Support for police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations;
- Support for public administration, in applying regulations and managing information;
- Support for the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods;
- Systems and methods to support policies and legal issues for social networks;
- Retrieval of legal information;
- Legal education;
- Digital-rights management;
- Alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line;
- Regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes;
- Theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the legal domain;
- Models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures;
- Legal inference and argumentation;
- Verification and validation of legal knowledge systems;
- Management of legal information in the semantic web;
- XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts;
- Modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions;
- Methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems;
- Evaluation of systems using advanced informatics techniques in legal applications;
- Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems.
The deadline for paper submission is September 5th, 2011. Papers should be submitted through the EasyChair Conference Management System, using PDF, PostScript or Word format, and should not exceed 10 pages when formatted using the styles and guidelines in the Instructions for Authors. Author instructions and style sheets can be found at the IOS Press site. Workshops and a selection of conference papers will be published in the electronic journal Jusletter IT.
Proposals for tutorials and workshops are invited and strongly encouraged. All proposals, including a short description of the topic, should be sent to the Programme Chair by email.
Programme Chair:
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, UK.
Local Organisation Chair:
Erich Schweighofer, University of Vienna, Austria in co-operation with University of Brno, Czech Republic and Austrian Computer Society OCG, Vienna.
Important Dates:
- Submissions of papers: Monday 5th September 2011
- Proposals for workshops and tutorials: Monday 12th September 2011
- Notification of acceptance: Late September 2011
- Camera-ready copies: Mid-October 2011
- Conference: 14th-16th December 2011
JURIX conferences are held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems.
Related articles
- Preliminary announcement JURIX 2011 (jurix.nl)
AIO Motivering van bewijsbeslissingen in strafzaken
June 1st, 2011 by henry No comments »
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Bij het Centrum voor Recht & ICT van de Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen is een promotieplaats beschikbaar voor onderzoek naar motivering van bewijsbeslissingen in strafzaken – een argumentatiemodel en richtlijnen voor softwareondersteuning. Meer informatie is te vinden op
http://www.rug.nl/corporate/vacatures/vacaturesRUG
en
http://www.rug.nl/gradschoolggsl/admissions/Bewijsbeslissingen?lang=nl
Een volledige onderzoeksbeschrijving is verkrijgbaar bij Henry Prakken, email h.prakken@rug.nl.
LEX 2011: Early-Bird Registration
May 25th, 2011 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »
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Legislative XML Summer School LEX 2011
Managing Legal Resources in the Semantic Web
5-10 September 2011
Faculty of Law
via Oberdan 1, Ravenna, Italy
The programme of the 2011 Edition of the Legislative XML Summer School is now available online:
http://summerschoollex.cirsfid.unibo.it/
This year the Summer School LEX is hosted by the Universty of Bologna, Ravenna location with the scientific partnership of EUI, IDT, ITTIG, CIRSFID, CS and Leibniz Center for Law (University of Amsterdam) and with the support of LegalXML-OASIS.
Deadline for the early-bird registration: June 30th.
JURIX 2011: Preliminary Announcement
May 20th, 2011 by henry 1 comment »
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JURIX 2011 (the 24th International Conferences on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems) will be held in Vienna (Austria), December 14-16, 2011. The organizing chair is Erich Schweighofer and the program chair is Katie Atkinson. The call for papers will be published soon, with a submission deadline in early September.
CODEX Resident Fellowship 2011/2012
May 20th, 2011 by Rinke Hoekstra No comments »Codex – The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (http://codex.stanford.edu) is accepting applications for a Resident Fellowship for the 2011-12 academic year. Codex is a cross-disciplinary research center jointly operated by Stanford Law School and the Stanford School of Engineering. The center’s mission is to explore the application of technology toward improving the quality, efficiency, and accessibility of the legal system. Codex research fellows will have the opportunity to spend one to two years at Stanford Law School collaborating with scholars in computer science and other relevant disciplines. Fellows will work on the center’s existing projects, and will have the opportunity to explore related research on their own and commence new projects. Fellows will work with cutting edge technologies emerging from Stanford’s engineering departments, and will be expected to bring a legally oriented perspective toward integrating these technologies into the law. Sample projects include automating the process of intellectual property licensing and developing automated legal compliance systems. Fellows will also be involved in bringing in leading thinkers in the field to speak at the law school on these topic areas and will work with law and computer science students to engage them in the center’s activities.
Qualifications:
Applicants should have a J.D. or equivalent law degree. Because the primary focus of the center is employing technology within the law, applicants should also have experience in computer science or engineering related fields. We welcome applicants with practical/professional technical experience in these fields as well as those with formal computer science or engineering undergraduate or graduate training. Applicants should be capable of learning and be comfortable with the technological aspects of the center’s projects.
Salary for the fellowship will be approximately $40,000 per year with benefits.
How to Apply:
All qualified and interested applicants must apply via the Stanford jobs website:http://jobs.stanford.edu search for this specific posting by entering job number: 42440 in the keyword search field. Applicants should submit:
- a resume;
- a brief letter (no more than 2 pages) describing the applicant’s interest in issues applying technology to the law, the applicant’s background, and the research that they propose to conduct;
- a list of references;
* Please note, if your application is selected to tier II of the hiring process, you will be requested to provide a copy of your law school transcript.
Review of applications will begin immediately, and all applications must be received by May 27, 2011. Please note that the Codex Center has a technological emphasis and is not focused on technology policy or legal substantive areas such as intellectual property, cyberlaw, or privacy.
For more information about the Stanford Codex Center and its projects please visit the website at http://codex.stanford.edu, or contact Roland Vogl atrvogl@law.stanford.edu.
