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Legal Writing and Research

University of Michigan Law School

Book Chapters

Series

Logic

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon Jan 1991

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Book Chapters

The use of the AUTOPROLOG system to generate automatically a legal expert system is described in this chapter. The interpretation of a statutory or other legal rule by one expert (or by the consensus of a group of experts) expressed in a normalized form is the only input needed by the AUTOPROLOG system (which includes Turbo Prolog, the AUTOPRO program, and some data files) to produce automatically a computer program that is an expert system for that legal rule. The process for producing a legal expert system for Section 213.1 of the Modal Penal Code, which deals with rape and …


Exploring Computer Aided Generation Of Questions For Normalizing Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon Jan 1988

Exploring Computer Aided Generation Of Questions For Normalizing Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Book Chapters

The process of normalizing a legal rule requires a drafter to indicate where the intent is to be precise and where it is to be imprecise in expressing both the between-sentence and within-sentence logical structure of that rule. Three different versions of a legal rule are constructed in the process of normalizing it: (1) the logical structure of the present version, (2) the detailed marker version, and (3) the logical structure of the normalized version. In order to construct the third version the analyst must formulate and answer specific questions about the terms that are used to express the logical …


Language, Law, And Logic: Plain Legal Drafting For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen Jan 1980

Language, Law, And Logic: Plain Legal Drafting For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen

Book Chapters

The achievement of current demands for clearer legal drafting in the United States (New York, 1973 and President's Executive Order, 1978) and Great Britain (Renton Report, 1975) can be aided by applying modern logic to improve the language of the law. In considering how the expression of legal norms can be clarified by using some formal language techniques, particular attention will be given to alternatives for dealing with problems of inadvertent imprecision in current legal drafting, alternatives that facilitate human understanding as well as enhance the possibilities for analysis by computer. A brief sketch of the imprecision of the expression …


Right1, Right2, Right3, Right4 And How About Right?, Layman E. Allen Jan 1971

Right1, Right2, Right3, Right4 And How About Right?, Layman E. Allen

Book Chapters

Careful communication is frequently of central importance in law. The language used to communicate even with oneself in private thought profoundly influences the quality of that effort; but when one attempts to transmit an idea to another, language assumes even greater significance because of the possibilities for enormously distorting the idea. Word-skill is to be prized. Few have expressed this more aptly or succinctly than Wesley N. Hohfeld: ...[I]n any closely reasoned problem, whether legal or nonlegal, chameleon-hued words are a peril both to clear thought and to lucid expression.