Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Justice (AI4J)

To be held in conjunction with the 22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2016)
August 30, 2016, The Hague, The Netherlands
http://www.ai.rug.nl/~verheij/AI4J/

SCOPE
Artificial intelligence is currently in the centre of attention of legal professionals. An abundance of startup companies explore the application of AI techniques in the domain of law, and there is even talk of artificially intelligent legal assistants disrupting the legal market space. Factors driving the increased attention for legal AI include:
- Technological breakthroughs in machine learning, natural language processing, ubiquitous computing, data science, and argumentation technology;
- The changing attitude towards technology in the legal domain;
- The much increased availability of legal data on the internet;
- The recent success of AI applications in the private and public domain;
- The success of technology supporting access to law, legal empowerment, and transparency;
- The increased need for norms embedded in technology (autonomous driving and warfare, big data analysis for crime fighting and counterterrorism).

The workshop is held as part of ECAI 2016 in The Hague, the residence of several international courts, such as the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Criminal Justice and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The workshop's theme "AI for justice" connects to the ECAI 2016 special topic "AI for human values".

The aim of this workshop is to investigate opportunities and challenges in AI applied to the law, with a particular focus on the relevance of the recent technological breakthroughs for AI & Law research and for legal practice. Questions addressed include the following:

- How can AI & Law research contribute to improving legal work in, for example, courts, law firms, public administration, police practice and businesses?
- How should AI & Law research change in light of the recent research breakthroughs and technological developments? For example, how can traditional research on legal knowledge bases, legal reasoning and legal argument be combined with data science, machine learning and natural language processing?

The law has been a longstanding application field for AI research. The biennial International conferences on AI & Law (ICAIL) started in 1987, the annual JURIX conferences on Legal Knowledge and information systems in 1988, and the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law was founded in 1992. Many ideas that are currently being commercially developed were first explored by AI & Law researchers, such as legal information retrieval, statistical analysis of legal data, automated contract drafting, automated processing of permit or welfare applications in public administration, and systems for regulatory compliance.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Some particular topics of relevance to the focus of the workshop are:

- Open data, linked data, big data;
- e-Discovery;
- Legal argument mining;
- Automated contract drafting;
- Computable contracts;
- Decision support for legal, forensic and police practice;
- Computational law.

SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION
Original research contributions and position papers are invited that address the above questions and topics or other issues relevant for the workshop. We encourage submissions that describe, evaluate or comment on working programs, apps or web sites. However, submissions of a more theoretical nature are also welcome. Papers should be of maximally 8 pages (position papers maximally 4 pages) and formatted in the ECAI submission format. Submissions can be uploaded via the EasyChair page of the conference: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ai4j.

Accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings, which will be distributed electronically together with the ECAI conference proceedings. Moreover, authors of a selection of papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper to a special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law devoted to the workshop's theme. (The submissions to the special issue will be subject to another reviewing and selection process.)

Questions can be sent to Henry Prakken (h.prakken@uu.nl) or one of the other workshop chairs.

IMPORTANT DATES
Paper submission deadline: May 27, 2016
Reviewing period: May 30 - June 13, 2016
Discussion period: June 14 - 23, 2016
Notification of acceptance or rejection: June 24, 2016

WORKSHOP CHAIRS
Floris Bex (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Tom van Engers (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Henry Prakken (University of Groningen & Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Bart Verheij (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

PROGRAMME COMMITEE (to be extended)
Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, UK
Trevor Bench-Capon, University of Liverpool, UK
Karl Branting, The MITRE Corporation, USA
Jack Conrad, Thomson Reuters, USA
Enrico Francesconi, CNR – ITTIG, Italy
Tom Gordon, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
Guido Governatori, NICTA, Australia
Matthias Grabmair, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Jeroen Keppens, King’s College London, UK
David Lewis, Chicago, USA
Monica Palmirani, CIRSFID, Italy
Dory Reiling, Court of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Erich Schweighofer, University of Vienna, Austria
Jaap van den Herik, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Serena Villata, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France
Radboud Winkels, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Adam Wyner, University of Aberdeen, UK

FINANCIAL SUPPORT
International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL)
Foundation for Legal Knowledge Based Systems (JURIX)
Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering (ALICE)