In March 2012, Mainland China has amended its Criminal Procedure Law, which includes the introduction of a new type of evidence, i.e., digital evidence, to the court of law. To better understand the development of computer forensics and digital evidence in Mainland China, this paper discusses the Chinese legal system in relation to digital investigation and how the current legal requirements af...

How do people make legal judgments based on complex bodies of interrelated evidence? This paper outlines a novel framework for evidential reasoning using causal idioms. These idioms are based on the qualitative graphical component of Bayesian networks, and are tailored to the legal context. They can be combined and reused to model complex bodies of legal evidence. This approach is applied to wi...

Digital forensic evidence consists of exhibits, each consisting of a sequence of bits, presented by witnesses in a legal matter, to help jurors establish the facts of the case and support or refute legal theories of the case. The exhibits should be introduced and presented and/or challenged by properly qualified people using a properly applied methodology that addresses the legal theories at is...

Legal reasoning with evidence can be a challenging task. We study the relation between two formal approaches that can aid the construction of legal proof: argumentation and Bayesian networks (BNs). Argument schemes are used to describe recurring patterns in argumentation. Critical questions for many argument schemes have been identified. Due to the increased use of statistical forensic evidence...

Holmes is concerned with a conflict between law and medicine about the problem of psychopathy, in particular as it relates to homicide. He looks for a consistent set of legal principles based on a variety of medical concepts and in doing so criticises the court for its commonsense approach, its disregard for medical evidence and for employing lay notions of responsibility and illness. This comm...