This book is a revised version of my dissertation 'DiaLaw - on legal th justification and dialog games' that I defended on June 5 1998 at the Universiteit Maastricht. The chapters 1, 4 & 5 (now: 1, 5 & 6) of my dissertation have remained largely unaltered. In chapter 2 I added explicitly the distinction between constructing legal justification and reconstructing it, and tried to elucidate the differences (and similarities) between the product and process of justification. Chapter 3 is divided into two chapters: one on the general characteristics of DiaLaw (now: chapter 3), and the other on specific, legal characteristics of DiaLaw (now: chapter 4). In order to improve readability, all rules in these chapters have been rewritten considerably. The section on the implementation of DiaLaw is moved to the appendix. In chapter 7 (the former chapter 6), a discussion of the notions 'procedural' and 'structural' arguments is added, and different layers in argumentation models are discussed. Finally, in chapter 8 (the former chapter 7) is added a recapitulation of my view on legal justification, and a discussion on the future use in legal practice of dialog models that represent argumentation in a natural way. The main thesis has remained unaltered: legal justification should be modeled as a procedural, dialogical model in which not only products of argumentation are allowed, but, even in formal models, rhetorical, psychological aspects of argument are dealt with.

Inhalt

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. From law to DiaLaw. 3. DiaLaw. Framework and general rules. 4. DiaLaw. Special rules for communication. 5. DiaLaw in action. 6. Dialogical models of argumentation. 7. What is an argument? Properties of procedural models of argumentation. 8. In conclusion. Appendix- Prolog code of DiaLaw. References. Index of names. Index of subjects.