An intellectual celebration: A review of the jurix legal knowledge based systems scholarship

The Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems (JURIX) has, sinceits foundation in 1988, become an internationally renowned forumfor Law and Artificial Intelligence in theNetherlands. This paper is based onan intellectual review of the work of JURIX requested by theorganisation as part of its 10th anniversary in December 1997 andpresented as a keynote address at the 10th anniversary conference.It has been updated to include the following two conferences. Itapplauds the overall effort but also suggests some directions forfuture development and suggests in particular: The breadth of research has been commendable, butthere is a need to move towards greater integration of systems andmigration to internet based systems. Tools are likely to be improved in the next generationincluding the internet. Legal Knowledge Based Systems (LKBS) researchmay need to abandon fine boundaries between AI and other applications tools. The commendable diversity of approaches to legalknowledge representation overlays concerns about the nature of lawand its translation in LKBS. These issues of knowledge representation, theory, costand organisation of production can be best addressed by a return to acybernetic systems theory as a basis of analysis of relationships involved,and an understanding of the implications of culture change. An awareness that traditional legal theories were notmeant for the information age. Theorisation about law needs to beinformed by a range of new theoretical approaches which approachlegal systems as cultural systems. There is need to study the impact on legal cultures ofthe development of knowledge based systems, that is the impact ofjurimetricisation of society.