Legal Evidence, Police Intelligence, Crime Analysis or Detection, Forensic Testing, and Argumentation:rnAn Overview of ComputerrnTools or Techniques

摘要

Notwithstanding a few seminal precursors from the late 1980s, it is only with the new century that the modelling of reasoning on legal evidence has emerged as a significant area within the well-established field of AI & Law (active since the 1970s). An overview such as the one in this article has never appeared before in the literature. It is three-pronged: it is about the modelling of reasoning about legal evidence, about tools for legal argumentation, and about select areas in forensic science. For newcomers into the modelling of legal evidence by means of AI techniques, it is essential not to simplistically blunder into such design choices that would result in flaws making the tools unusable by legal professionals, so it is important to be aware of ongoing controversies. Other tools are appropriate for law enforcement, e.g., tools assisting in crime analysis. In the compass of this article, we only very briefly deal with the modelling of arguments as such,rnand we only sketchily foray into forensic science, by selecting some areas within it by way of exemplification.