Modeling legal conflict resolution based on dynamic logic

Abstract

Abstract Conflicts between legal norms are common in reality. In many legislations, legal conflicts between norms are resolved by applying ordered principles. This work presents a formalization of the conflict resolution mechanism and introduces action legal logic ($\textsf{ALL}$) to reason about the normative consequences of possibly conflicting legal systems. The semantics of $\textsf{ALL}$ is explicitly based on legal systems consisting of norms and ordered principles. Legal systems specify the legal status of transitions in transition systems and the language of $\textsf{ALL}$ describes the legal status of paths in transition systems. The formalization is used to study abstract revisions of legal systems. The expressivity of $\textsf{ALL}$ is studied and its completeness is proved.