Volume 11, Number 2

Automated Discovery of Logical Fallacies in Legal Argumentation

  Authors

Callistus Ireneous Nakpih¹ and Simone Santini², ¹St. John Bosco’s College of Education, Ghana and ²Universidad Autonoma De Madrid, Spain

  Abstract

This paper presents a model of an algorithmic framework and a system for the discovery of non sequitur fallacies in legal argumentation. The model functions on formalised legal text implemented in Prolog. Different parts of the formalised legal text for legal decision-making processes such as, claim of a plaintiff, the piece of law applied to the case, and the decision of judge, will be assessed by the algorithm, for detecting fallacies in an argument. We provide a mechanism designed to assess the coherence of every premise of a claim, their logic structure and legal consistency, with their corresponding piece of law at each stage of the argumentation. The modelled system checks for validity and soundness of a claim, as well as sufficiency and necessity of the premise of arguments. We assert that, dealing with the challenges of validity, soundness, sufficiency and necessity resolves fallacies in argumentation.

  Keywords

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Logic Fallacy, Legal Argumentation, Algorithms in Prolog.