Witness Testimony Evidence: Argumentation and the Law

Recent work in artificial intelligence has increasingly turned to argumentation as a rich, interdisciplinary area of research that can provide new methods related to evidence and reasoning in the area of law. Douglas Walton provides an introduction to basic concepts, tools and methods in argumentation theory and artificial intelligence as applied to the analysis and evaluation of witness testimony. He shows how witness testimony is by its nature inherently fallible and sometimes subject to disastrous failures. At the same time such testimony can provide evidence that is not only necessary but inherently reasonable for logically guiding legal experts to accept or reject a claim. Walton shows how to overcome the traditional disdain for witness testimony as a type of evidence shown by logical positivists, and the views of trial sceptics who doubt that trial rules deal with witness testimony in a way that yields a rational decision-making process.

• Introduces new methods for visual representation of witness testimony evidence • Useful for the many fields that have an interest in evidence in law and related disciplines • Important reading for graduate students of law, philosophy, logic and artificial intelligence

Introduction; 1. Witness testimony as argumentation; 2. Plausible reasoning in legal argumentation; 3. Scripts, stories, and anchored narratives; 4. Computational dialectics; 5. Witness examination as peirastic dialogue; 6. A dialectical model of the fair trial; 7. Supporting and attacking witness testimony.