Deontic Logic and Legal Knowledge Representation*

Abstract. The current literature in the Artificial Intelligence and Law field reveals uncertainty concerning the potential role of deontic logic in legal knowledge representation. For instance, the Logic Programming Group at Imperial College has shown that a good deal can be achieved in this area in the absence of explicit representation of the deontic notions. This paper argues that some rather ordinary parts of the law contain structures which, if they are to be represented in logic, will call for use of a reasonably sophisticated deontic logic.     

LON FULLER’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE

This essay retrieves Lon Fuller’s theory of language and the role of experience in such a theory. The essay distinguishes meaning from signification. A sign signifies or represents an object. Meaning is experienced before one ever signifies an object. Signification is cognitive. Meaning is bodily. Fuller locates meaning in what Hart excluded from legality as “pre-legal”. In the pre-legal realm, meant objects draw from memories and expectations. The memories may have been personally or collectively experienced. The analysis of rules takes signification for granted, however. When meaning is privileged, we appreciate why interpretation figures importantly in the role of the lawyer/official. So too, shared meanings, ‚located’ in experienced time, explain understanding and communication between members of a group. As a consequence of Fuller’s insights, meaning pre-conditions communication as well as the analysis of the signified rule. Since traditional analytical jurisprudence holds out that lawyers/officials analyse rules, both jurisprudence and the analytic project, Fuller cautions, risk being estranged from the lived meanings of the pre-legal realm. Instead, jurisprudes, lawyers and officials risk locking themselves into a fictitious world of dead concepts which are better known as rules.An earlier draft of this paper was given to the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy, Cambridge UK. I am grateful to the participants for feed-back. I am also grateful for the research facilities of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, where the essay was researched and written, and to the anonymous referees of this journal.     

On the Logic of Deontic Conditionals*

Abstract. The paper outlines the approach to the analysis of deontic conditionals taken in earlier work by Jones and Pörn, compares it very briefly with two main trends within dyadic deontic logic, and then discusses problems associated with the augmentation principle and the factual detachment principle. The author then modifies Jones and Pörn's previous system, using a classical but not normal (in the sense of Chellas) deontic modality to provide the basis for an alternative analysis of deontic conditionals. This new analysis validates neither the factual detachment nor the augmentation principles. However, influenced by the approach of James Delgrande to default reasoning, the author tries to show how a restricted form of factual detachment may be accommodated within the revised system.     

Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political-bureaucratic relationships; discriminating because they suggest the presence of many communities and different types of networks. Yet if the concepts are going to continue to make a contribution, some problems must be resolved. The article suggests three that are particularly important: network and community concepts encounter obstacles in incorporating the influence of ma-cropolitical institutions and the power of political discourse; they have some difficulty in accommodating the internationalization of many policy domains; they have not addressed well the issues of policy innovation and policy change.     

After Independence in East Africa

This talk by the Director of the Overseas Development Institutewas given to a joint meeting of the Royal African Society andthe Royal Commonwealth Society on February 1, 1962. Sir JamesRobertson, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., K.B.E., took the chair.     

The Effects of Urbanisation in South and Central Africa

This represents the bulk of a lecture on the 10th July, underthe Chairmanship of Lord Hailey. Mr. Rheinallt Jones is Presidentof the South African Institute of Race Relations, and Advisoron Native Affairs to the Anglo-American Corporation.