Abstract for ITO Grantees' Workshop

New Models of Deliberation for Social Sciences

Negotiation and Legal Reasoning

R. P. Loui
Washington University
St. Louis



Negotiation

With Fernando Tohme, visiting Prof. of Economics (Argentina)

We have been looking at models of negotiation that alter game-theory's models in simple but fundamental ways:
  • utilities change because agents reason about proposals
  • agents can discuss constraints, requesting problem-solving
  • agents can pursue problem-solving subdialogues
  • agents can argue about the merits of their proposals.
    The model builds on the ideas that many AI researchers have had on negotiation from non-game-theoretic points of view, including Carberry, Allen, Grosz, Sycara, and Guinn. It gives formal standing to the issues raised by the major students of negotiation outside of game theory: Roger Fisher (law) and Dean Pruitt (social psychology).

    Our main aim is to formalize these ideas in a way that will convince mathematical game-theorists of the poverty of their paradigm and the superiority of the AI view. We have a paper at the AAAI Spring Symposium and drafts for papers aimed at Theory and Decision and Negotiation Journal.

    A web-site built by an REU student (Kay Hashimoto/Harvard econ) is at http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~kh/demo and exhibits how dialogue might be generated when two negotiating agents are each solving high-dimensional (10-30 variable) non-linear optimization problems to determine their utilities (the optimization is a proxy for an AI planning problem, and which might be more palatable to non-AI audiences).

    1 2 3 4
    5

    The figures (which can be enlarged with your right mouse button) depict (1) the non-linear constrained optimization problems governing the payoffs; (2) an agent's initial view of the negotiation situation; (3) an agent's gradient search which improves the understanding of the proposal; (4) the revised view (note the blue value has changed); and (5) the resulting dialogue (which is read bottom-to-top because of the way Netscape scrolls frames).

    Legal Reasoning

    With Jeff Norman, Foley and Lardner, Chicago

    We have built a web-site called Room 5 which invites visitors to play an argument game using issues from cases before the Supreme Court. The objectives are
  • to close the gap between theoretical models of legal argumentation and real domain problems
  • to investigate legal ontologies
  • to build a database of annotated federal case law.
    At present, the site showcases (1) argument-formatting which uses encapsulation instead of graphical objects, an improvement over Toulmin form (cscw/visual languages); (2) an on-line search engine of Federal opinion case citations (datamining); and (3) highly regulated argument moves which make automated reasoning superfluous (computational dialectics).

    The work is reported in a paper submitted to the Intl. Conf. on AI and Law. Related papers will appear in Law, Computers and AI, and Logic, Law and Computation and have been submitted to Ratio Juris. The site builds on work by REU students Joe Altepeter, Dan Pinkard, Jessica Linsday, and Mark Foltz (MIT AI Lab). It is http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~room5 (although it is often in a state of flux). NSF funding supported postdoctoral visits of Gerard Vreeswijk and Bart Verheij on this project.

    The following tables are from the Room 5 site.

    Room 5

    Ladue v. Gilleo

    Ladue's interests are not sufficiently compelling to support a content-based restriction
    Ladue's interests are substantial
    Ladue's restriction is content-based
    The First Amendmant can prevent a township from achieving its goals by restricting the free flow of information
    Residential signs are an unusually cheap and convenient form of communication; a yard or window sign may have no practical substitute
    The private citizen's interest in controlling the use of his own property justifies disparate treatment
    Regulation of speech can be impermissibly under-inclusive
    A city's interest in traffic safety and its aesthetic interest in preventing visual clutter could justify a prohibition of off-site commerical billboards
    EVEN San Diego's ordinance was invalid
    The practical effect of the San Diego ordinance was to eliminate the billboard as an effective medium for noncommercial messages
    San Diego failed to make the strong showing needed to justify such content-neutral prohibitions of particular media of communication
    City Council for LA upheld an ordinance the prohibited the posting of signs on public property, noting Metromedia's conclusion that visual clutter sufficed to justify a prohibition
    BUT that prohibition did not extend to private property

    Room 5

    Ladue v. Gilleo

    content-based restriction AND NOT compelling
    THUS invalid
    substantial
    content-based
    restricts free flow of information THOUGH achieves goals
    THUS can be invalid
    Linmark v. Willingboro
    unusual form of expression
    THUS may have no practical substitute
    Vincent; Anderson; Martin; Meadowmoor
    private property
    THUS can be treated differently from public property
    City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent
    doesn't regulate enough speech
    THUS can be invalid regulation
    First Nat Bank of Boston v. Belloti
    safety interest AND aesthetic interest
    THUS could justify prohibition
    Metromedia v. San Diego
    STILL was invalid
    Metromedia v. San Diego
    eliminates medium
    not strong enough showing
    visual clutter
    THUS can be prohibited
    City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent
    private property THOUGH visual clutter
    THUS maybe not justified
    City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent

    Room 5



    Attack
    w/ Point
    w/ Exception

    Support
    w/ Point

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    		Authority:
    Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781 (1989); Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77 (1949)

    Paraphrase:
    It is common ground that governments may regulate the physical characteristics of signs

    Formal Argument:
    regulates physical characteristics of signs
    THUS valid ordinance
    NEW ARGUMENT
    Authority:

    Paraphrase:

    Formal Argument:

    THUS


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