Sailing the Semantic Seas by Structural Vessels: Problems and Perspectives for Knowledge
Discovery in the Legal Domain
G. Ajani
gianmaria.ajani@unito.it
P. Rossi
p.rouge@inwind.it
In this paper, we
consider
how
the
relationship of L
aw and AI
concerns
the
issue
of knowledge
discovery
and whether new advances in the complexity paradigm, in terms of
social
network
analysis, can be fruitful to knowledge disc
overy in the legal domain
.
Seen from an epistemological point of view,
knowledge discovery in AI theory may reproduce
the
traditional concept of truth as
adequacy between object and cognition
at different levels of world
description
.
T
he current st
ate of
legal research discusses
knowledge discovery
,
either
moulding
diverse
pragmatist, coherent theories of truth,
or
promoting a notion of knowledge construction
instead of
knowledge discovery
in the legal domain.
When se
en from an instrumental point of view,
A
I
model
s
are
a representation of information in a
specific structure, and claims for the model’s effectiveness
do stress
the interface between model
s
and
the world
,
asking for instruments in
the assessment of the represented knowledge.
Since AI models
c
an only arise from
their
employ
by
particular agents in specific
situations
, the
question of effectiveness in the representation is often reduced to the
usefulness
to some
environments or uses
.
The legal contexts are difficult to be grasped in controlled
situations, because of the interconnection
within
and beyond
national jurisdictions
among the different players (judges,
legislators
, scholars)
and
among
the different instances they produce (judicial decisions, statutes, doctrinal comments) .
T
he pictu
re of knowledge
in a social phenomenon, such as law,
can be
symbolized by a network
of
meanings and practices
, where the
notion of
knowledge
as
a matter of
exact
correspondence
between
concepts and world
has
to be discarded.
Ontological mapping in the leg
al domain is thus a difficult
assignment
where a task
-
based approach
cannot be really achieved due to
the overlapping of situations, while domain level approach
encounters the social construction of concepts
that
may diverge among legal orders in considera
tion
of their historical,
cultural and political inheritances.
Despite the theoretical uncertainty about the effective analysis instruments to be implied for, t
he
real challenge
for legal research
introduced
by
the complexity paradigm,
in terms of
socia
l network
analysis
,
seems to be
the
assess
ment of
the impact of
the production of legal discourses on legal
practices and social contexts.
The promises of social network analysis are interesting
even
for
the ontology modelling:
social
network analysis
co
uld improve
, indeed,
the epistemological completeness of
the ontology
mapping, importing a way to assess
the
effectiveness of
knowledge discovery
in the legal domain.
Consequently, we evaluate in details
both the theoretical feasibility of the matching b
etween
semantic nodes and social nodes, and
its
practicability in fields, like the multilingual legal
applications, where the accuracy of the currently implemented
tools for the needs of jurist
s
and
practitioners is
rather
inadequate
.
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