Legal deduction,legal predicates and expert systems

Much of the text which follows was first presented to the Conference of the Legal Expert System Association at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, in August 1987, and followed by a similar argument, slightly differently angled, at a Symposium in honour of Ota Weinberger in Graz, whose proceedings remain for the moment unpublished. I have also received valuable criticisms through discussions of the latter version at meetings of an Esprit Working Group on Foundations of Legal Reasoning convened by Dr. Tim Flanagan of Cambridge, 1988–91.