Mixing Legal and Nonlegal Norms

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Mixing Legal and Non-legal Norms

• Alexander Boer
• aboer_at_uva.nl

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Overview

• The ontological status of norms
• Why norms as preferences?
• Validity of norms as preferences
• Contrary-to-duty situations
• Normative conflict
• Further work
• Only in the paper
• Composition of non-legal preferences vs.
• Composition of legal preferences (choice
  principles)

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The ontological status of norms

• Norm is an epistemological category in
  assessment
• Of a broken circuit board (norm group)
• Of abnormal behaviour (normal)
• Of undesirable behaviour (normative)
• Preference is an epistemological category in
  planning
• Personal preference
• Adopted preference (constraint)
• In context of agent norm preference

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Norms and Preferences in the Legal System

• Norms of analysis of involved stakeholders in
  drafting legislation
• Legal norms adopted from legislation by
  addressees of legislation
• Social norms adopted by addressees of legislation
• Personal preferences of addressees
• Adaptation of personal and social preferences to
  legal norms (evasion)

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Uses of preferences

• Making decisions constrained by legal norms
  (Legal Services Counter, E-POWER)
• Assessing behaviour against legal norms (CLIME)
• Assessing expected behaviour (adapted to legal
  norms) against norms of analysis (E-POWER
  simulation)
• Comparing two alternative sets of legal norms
  (E-POWER simulation)
• ? Almost always legal and non-legal preferences
  involved

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Why?

• My PhD Thesis
• Newton workbench
• Understandable Legal Knowledge Acquisition
• Understandable representation method
• Semantic Web (merging norms from different
  sources)
• ESTRELLA Project
• European project for Standardized Transparent
  Representations in order to Extend LegaL
  Accessibility
• Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF)
• Make everybody happy represent whatever you
  want, apply reasoning rules depending on purpose

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Ideas

• Entity-Relationship-based (boxes and lines)
  method for representing normative statements in
  the Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• Use mainstream Decision Theory concepts (choice,
  preference, composition of preferences)
• Mixing with non-legal preferences
• Use concepts from Knowledge Acquisition
  methodology
• Concept Triads and decision trees/tables

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Knowledge Acquisition as eliciting choices

• Ontology and Decision Trees
• Concepts and differentiae
• Repertory grids
• Triads Binary choices, opposites
• Choice reveals a preference
• Norms
• Binary choice between compliance and violation
• Choice is guided by imposed preference
  (acceptance of a norm)

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Norms as preferences?

• Revealed vs. motivating preference
• Preference for things vs. classes of things
• Combinative vs. exclusionary preference
• Conditional vs. absolute preferences?

S
subClassOf
disjointWith
A
A
lt
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Subsumption
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Conditional preference
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Deontic operators to preference relations
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A fourth deontic operator Liberty
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Representation in OWL

• Entity-relation model (subject-predicate-object
  triples)
• Very similar to description logics (KIF, LOOM,
  KRSS, etc.) but very different (graph-based)
  syntax
• Separates statements about concepts (terminology)
  and instances (assertions)
• No Unique Name Assumption for instances
• Merging triples from different sources

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Preference for classes of things in OWL

• Operational semantics of preference relation is
  similar to , lt, gt, gt, lt
• Relation on concepts, not instances
• Second order relation
• Either not OWL DL but OWL Full, or two separate
  OWL DL terminological boxes
• Second order Reasoning in practice simple
• Not possible to represent that and lt are
  disjoint!
• No disjointness on relations

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gt
lt
lt
gt

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Validity of norms as preferences?

• Contrary-to-duty situations
• Chisholm, Forrester, Gentle Murderer, Reykjavic,
  etc.
• Normative conflict
• Conflict of disaffirmation
• Disaffirming an imperative
• Disaffirming a permission
• Hills intersection conflicts
• Conflict of compliance
• Other conflicts
• Hohfeldian concepts, etc.

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Contrary-to-duty situations
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Chisholms situation
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Chisholms situation
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The Reykjavic situation
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Normative Conflict
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Conflicts of disaffirmation disaffirmation of an
imperative
Using the network facilities in the university
building is prohibited. Using WiFi in the
classrooms is permitted.
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Conflicts of disaffirmation disaffirmation of a
permission
Using the network facilities in the university
building is permitted. Using WiFi in the
classrooms is prohibited.
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Unresolved cases of disaffirmation

• Symmetric subsumption of situation vs.
  alternatives
• Using the network facilities in the classrooms is
  prohibited.
• Using WiFi in the university building is
  permitted.
• No clear solution
• Is this simply not a conflict?
• Does the most specific description of alternative
  take precedence?
• Hills intersection conflicts?

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Unresolved cases of disaffirmation
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Conflicts of compliance

• Impossibility of joint compliance (IJC)
• In S you ought to both P and not P
• Did you voluntarily enter into situation S?
• Can you move out of situation S?
• Example
• Police night clubs ought to lock unguarded
  emergency exits
• Fire department night clubs ought not to lock
  emergency exits

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Conflicts of compliance
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Conflict between permissions?

• Elhag et al
• There seem to be other types of conflict as that
  between the permission for A to live in a certain
  house and a permission for B to destroy that same
  house. These conflicts need our attention and
  have to be embodied in a theory on normative
  conflicts.
• Neither agent has to deal with a circular
  ordering of alternatives
• Both agents are free to act

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Other cases of conflict?

• Conflict of legal and non-legal norms
• permission for A to live in a certain house and a
  permission for B to destroy that same house ?
• permission for A to live in a house that is to be
  destroyed (given Bs preferences?)
• A norm of analysis is violated
• Alternative assumption of implicit right-duty
  relation between A and B?
• Conflict of a norm with reality
• Unrealizability of compliance with norm

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Other work

• Composition of preferences in Law vs. Decision
  Theory
• Choice rules (Lex Specialis etc.) work because of
  restricted format for legal preferences
• Additive (MAUT) and multiplicative (utility)
  composition in Decision Theory
• Hohfeldian legal concepts
• Right, duty, power, liability, etc.

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Further work

• ESTRELLAs LKIF and Newton
• Axioms on/off
• Automated Problem Solving vs. evaluation queries
• Isomorphism MetaLex legislative XML structures to
  OWL representation
• Classification of sentence patterns
• Normative statements about (application of)
  legislation
• Choice rules defined in legislation
• E.g. overruling Lex Posterior