DEFEASIBLE DEONTIC REASONING AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO NORMATIVE SYSTEMS

Our interests are in the application of deontic logic for the modellin g of regulations in commercial law and other social institutions. We p rovide a first-order framework of deontic reasoning that can model and compute social regulations and rules. This effort has practical impor tance due to the ubiquity and complexity of social regulations and nor ms. Computer-mediated modelling of norms may reduce the overhead of ma naging complex social norms and avoid inefficiencies and social inequi ty resulting from complex and ill-maintained social norms. In order to achieve the goal, we apply defeasible reasoning, a clausal form logic programming approach, and capture deontic concepts in first-order rep resentations. The proposed formalism is applied to the modelling of no rmative systems such as bureaucratic regulations and legal reasoning.