Electronic Law Journals - JILT 1998 (3) - Bench-Capon et al

The effective use of argument is, of course, central to the practice of Law, and it is important that students of Law learn this skill. We describe here the architecture of a computer-based system to enable students to practice argumentation in a regulated environment. The system makes use of the concept of a dialogue game as a means of providing the necessary rule-governed structure for the conduct of an argument between two students, or a student and a teacher. The architecture described is generic in that it can be instantiated with different forms of dialogue game. This instantiation is achieved by the use of performatives to specify the rules of the game and the semantics of operations within the Dialogue Abstract Machine that is used to implement it.