Fact Investigation and Proof Standards in Legal Argumentation

A logical framework is presented to model legal interpretation and bring an appropriate construction of legal arguments. Reasoning with assumptions allows the construction of hypotheses. This is proposed in the context of legal procedures' dynamics, where the framework evolves as part of the investigation prior to each trial instance. Two gender-biased legal cases from the Argentinian jurisprudence are analyzed in the light of the proposed theory. Afterward, some proof standards for civil law systems are discussed as a way to define a specialized dialectical argumentation semantics. We claim that the application of the proposed theory would bring software assistance for controlling the influence of external factors of the law in the investigation of a legal case. © 2001-2011 IEEE.