Case-based reasoning and law EDWINA L. RISSLAND 1, KEVIN D. ASHLEY2 and L. KARL BRANTING3

The research pursued in the early 1980s by Rissland, Ashley, Branting, and Skalak explored the rich vein of case-based reasoning in the context of legal argument. Some of these seminal projects were presented in a special 1991 pair of issues of the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies (e.g., Ashley 1991; Branting, 1991; Rissland & Skalak, 1991). Ideas from these research projects lay the foundation of what is now termed interpretive CBR, that is, how to interpret new cases in light of past interpretations. This work has also influenced the community that develops formal models of argumentation and defeasible reasoning, and these models have in turn contributed more formal models to CBR (e.g., Bench-Capon & Sartor, 2003). The AI and law community continues to provide a rich tributary of ideas and techniques about CBR and for integrating it with other reasoning modalities in CBR hybrids, such as rule-based reasoning, heuristic search, and information retrieval.