Knight, B., Ma, J. and Nissan, E. (1998) Representing temporal knowledge in legal discourse. Information & Communications Technology Law, 7 (3). pp. 199-211. ISSN 1360-0834 (Print), 1469-8404 (Online) (doi:10.1080/13600834.1998.9965791)

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Abstract

This paper presents a formalism for representing temporal knowledge in legal discourse that allows an explicit expression of time and event occurrences. The fundamental time structure is characterized as a well‐ordered discrete set of primitive times, i.e. non‐decomposable intervals with positive duration or points with zero duration), from which decomposable intervals can be constructed. The formalism supports a full representation of both absolute and relative temporal knowledge, and a formal mechanism for checking the temporal consistency of a given set of legal statements is provided. The general consistency checking algorithm which addresses both absolute and relative temporal knowledge turns out to be a linear programming problem, while in the special case where only relative temporal relations are involved, it becomes a simple question of searching for cycles in the graphical representation of the corresponding legal text.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	[1] This article appeared in Information & Communications Technology Law, Vol. 7, Issue 3, 1998, Special Issue: Formal Models of Legal Time, pp. 199-211.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	temporal knowledge, legal discourse, absolute temporal knowledge, relative temporal knowledge, legal text
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) K Law > K Law (General) Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Computer & Computational Science Research Group School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Computer Science
Related URLs:	Publisher Publisher Organisation
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2016 08:59
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/126

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