Information Technology and Legal Reasoning (P02914)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : LAW-P-P01167

Information Technology & Legal Reasoning examines technology systems that are available to support lawyers, law enforcement officials and judges from the point at which a case is prepared to the point of sentencing. It looks at systems to support mediation; systems that represent legal arguments graphically; systems that support case preparation, case management, documents and intelligent information retrieval; systems that can be used in courtrooms; and systems to support sentencing. The course looks at the principles underlying each of these systems, from game theory to semantic indexing and from deontic logic to ontology.

Entry Requirements

? Special Arrangements for Entry : This course is taught by distance learning.

? Costs : Students should have regular and reliable access to the Internet. Print consumables (paper and ink) would be recommended to provide hard copy of some on screen text and materials (e.g. articles). Also purchase of textbooks.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Law, (School of Law, Schedule F)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Additional Class Information : This course is taught by distance learning.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

- To understand how and which technological solutions are currently developed to address perceived problems in the legal process and in administration of justice
- To be aware of different paradigms for intelligent technology and their underlying principles, covering Toulmin argumentation systems, rule based and case based reasoners
- To evaluate critically the derivation of computer technologies from jurisprudential theories of legal reasoning
- To understand the impact of new technologies on questions of civil rights, due process and access to justice
- To form an informed opinion regarding the conformance of the proposed technologies with ethical, political & economic models of the legal process & access to justice
- To analyse critically the role of technologies in the social, economic and ethical environment in which the legal profession operates and to develop a vision of the skills the legal profession needs to develop in dealing with new technologies.

Assessment Information

One essay, 5000 words (60%) and two pieces of assessed work (20% each).

Note: Completion of the Certificate, the Diploma and progression through the LLM programme will be subject to participation in and completion of core activities within this module.