An advisory system for open textured law

The author is developing an expert system based on and taking into account the fundamental open-texturedness of law, specifically case-law. Such a system can generate conflicting answers in many cases. Its role is to point out the different possible approaches to the legal problem at hand and the contradictory conclusions that may be reached. It must be able to supply explanations for its conclusions, i.e. supply the chain of legal argumentation and reasoning behind its conflicting answers. An advisory system of this kind could be a decision-making aid for a lawyer or a judge. The central problems of developing such a system are specified and the implementation of the system is discussed