Integration of retrieval, reasoning and drafting for refugee law: A third generation legal knowledge based system

We identify an argument to be the basic unit of reasoning of a system that supports the construction of arguments and drafting of determinations in refugee law. Collaboration with the Refugee Review Tribunal of Australia has led to the development of a framework for argument construction that includes over 200 generic arguments. However, these arguments may not encompass all arguments used in any particular case. The construction of non-generic arguments involves the integration of information retrieval within reasoning. This retrieval is passage based from a wide variety of text sources. The framework also acts as the illocutionary structure in a document drafting process. in conceptualizing this system we have found it useful to propose a classification of knowledge based systems in law.