Salvaging The Spirit Of The Meter-Models Tradition: A Model Of Belief Revision By Way Of An Abstract Idealization Of Response To Incoming Evidence Delivery During The Construction Of Proof In Court

Inside the Juror (Hastie 1994) was, in a sense, a point of arrival for research developing formalisms that describe judicial decision making. Meter-based models of various kinds were mature, and even ready for giving way to such models that would concern themselves with the narrative content of the cases at hand, that a court is called to decide upon. Moreover, excessive emphasis was placed on lay factfinders, i.e. on jurors. It is noticeable that as ‘‘AI & Law’’ has become increasingly concerned with evidence in recent years with efforts coordinated by Nissan & Martino, Zeleznikow, and others the baggage of the meter-based models from jury research does not appear to be exploited. In this article, we try to combine their tradition with a technique of belief revision from artificial intelligence, in an attempt to provide an architectural component that would be complementary to models that apply representations or reasoning to legal narrative content.