Legal Reasoning Engine for Civil Court Procedure

摘要

In this paper, we propose a new inference engine for legal reasoning in civil court (LR engine). Three main modules of the engine consist of the Prove algorithm, the Defense algorithm and the Estoppel algorithm. These modules work in switching style in order to drive the legal reasoning according to the Evidence law and the doctrine of Estoppel. In this study, Thai Civil and Commercial Code Law are applied as a legal knowledge base. Several legal cases are examined to validate LR engine and analyze its performance. The experimental result shows that LR engine can automatically handle the case containing estoppel and can reduce the steps of proof. Moreover, it provides reasonable legal explanation compared to the traditional algorithm.