Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T23:32:36.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Supporting and Attacking Witness Testimony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2010

Douglas Walton
Affiliation:
University of Windsor, Ontario
Get access

Summary

We begin this chapter by analyzing how evidence supporting witness testimony can be modeled as a kind of argumentation. This takes us back to the problems we encountered in Chapter 1 concerning the representation of corroborative evidence using argumentation technology. We continue the chapter by analyzing how argumentation that questions, attacks, or defeats arguments from witness testimony can be modeled. The second task is the more challenging of the two, because, as we have seen in the previous chapters, attacking witness testimony involves scripts and stories, and the kind of plausible reasoning used to support and to attack the arguments in them. In addition, we have seen that the engine for questioning in attacking witness testimony is the examination dialogue, and this type of dialogue has been so little studied in the literature on argumentation, artificial intelligence, and law that any attempt to apply it to witness testimony evidence is pioneering work. At present, the aim of much of this work is to develop systems of argumentation that might lead to applications in law in the not too distant future. However, because the theory of examination dialogue presented in this book is so new, even in argumentation theory, there is an additional task of showing how witness testimony can be formalized in such systems and implemented in computer programs for legal reasoning. The existing systems model arguments as sets of propositions, as premises and conclusions and arguments linked together to form chains of reasoning.

Type
Chapter
Information
Witness Testimony Evidence
Argumentation and the Law
, pp. 296 - 338
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×