Mixing Legal and Non-legal Norms Alexander Boer

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)

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

Norms and Preferences in the Legal System 1.‘Norms of analysis’ of involved stakeholders in drafting legislation 2.Legal norms adopted from legislation by addressees of legislation 3.Social norms adopted by addressees of legislation 4.Personal preferences of addressees 5.Adaptation of personal and social preferences to legal norms (evasion)

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

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

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

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)

Norms as preferences?  Revealed vs. motivating preference  Preference for things vs. classes of things  Combinative vs. exclusionary preference  Conditional vs. absolute preferences? S A¬A disjointWith subClassOf <

Subsumption

Conditional preference

Deontic operators to preference relations

A fourth deontic operator: Liberty

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

Preference for classes of things in OWL  Operational semantics of preference relation is similar to =, = =, >, <  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 < are disjoint!  No disjointness on relations…

=< >= <>=

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  Hill’s ‘intersection’ conflicts  Conflict of compliance  Other conflicts  Hohfeldian concepts, etc.

Contrary-to-duty situations

Chisholm’s situation

The Reykjavic situation

Normative Conflict

Conflicts of disaffirmation: disaffirmation of an imperative Using the network facilities in the university building is prohibited. Using WiFi in the classrooms is permitted.

Conflicts of disaffirmation: disaffirmation of a permission Using the network facilities in the university building is permitted. Using WiFi in the classrooms is prohibited.

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?  Hill’s “intersection conflicts”?

Unresolved cases of disaffirmation

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

Conflicts of compliance

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.” 1.Neither agent has to deal with a circular ordering of alternatives 2.Both agents are free to act

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 B’s 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

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.

Further work  ESTRELLA’s 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