A Bayesian network (BN) is a graphical model of uncertainty that is especially well-suited to legal arguments. It enables us to visualise and model dependencies between different hypotheses and pieces of evidence and to calculate the revised probability beliefs about all uncertain factors when any piece of new evidence is presented. Although BNs have been widely discussed and recently used in t...

This paper examines questions about contract enforcement in the absence of formal legal institutions, using archival evidence for one particular rural society in pre-emancipation Russia. The evidence presented indicates that enforcement services provided by the local landlord made it possible for Russians from different socioeconomic and legal strata (soslovii) to engage in a wide variety of co...

Maintaining regulatory compliance is an increasing concern. Legal Knowledge Management systems could support the work of compliance managers. However, there are challenges to overcome, of interpreting legal knowledge and mapping it onto business processes. In this discussion paper we determine requirements for Legal Knowledge Management systems that can handle these challenges. We argue that an...

Originally, behavioral law and economics was an exercise in exploring the implications of key findings from behavioral economics (and psychology) for the analysis and reform of legal institutions. Yet as the new discipline matures, it increasingly replaces foreign evidence by fresh evidence, directly targeted to the legal research question. This chapter surveys the key methods: field evidence, ...

The adversarial structure of the American judicial system encourages critical reviews and challenges of forensic evidence. As a result, the discriminatory power of friction ridge skin impression evidence has been a prime target of debate among critics of the latent print discipline for years, the primary argument being friction ridge skin examination is neither scientif ically reliable nor lega...

In the evidential reasoning of human beings, stories play a role in providing an analytic account of the facts. In a legal aspect, the approach of legal reasoning, based on the notion of narratives with evidence, needs to be investigated and supported. The study aims to understand how lawyers cognitively process e-discovery cases, in order to find out the use of narrative in the e-discovery of ...

There has been a significant increase in the litigation of selective enforcement cases based on racial profiling claims. This trend has resulted in two legal issues that are problematic for racial profiling research. First, selective enforcement claims that rely on statistical evidence must successfully measure “similarly situated persons” who were eligible for police stops to provide a compari...

In lawsuits involving complex scientific issues of causation, dispute resolution requires that a final decision be reached in each case, regardless of whether science is able to provide definitive answers to the questions of causation raised at trial. Proving causation before science has is a concept that scientists may find disconcerting and foreign to some of their basic assumptions. This pap...

This article discusses the results of a literature review that has assessed the impact of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) legislation in 28 countries (27 in Africa and Yemen) where FGM is concentrated. Evidence on the impact of FGM legislation was available on prevalence of FGM; changes in societal attitudes and perceptions of FGM; knowledge and awareness of FGM legislation and consequences, an...

elamite documents, and evidence of elamite writing in general, are rare from this period. however from susa under the sukkalmah period, there are some 550 legal documents in akkadian in various legal subjects, like sale, lease, and judicial procedures; this provides the historian with a unique opportunity fir the study of elamite legal and social institutions. the present essay will edit and tr...