SHYSTER Legal System LQ

SHYSTER: A Pragmatic Legal Expert System JAMES DAVID POPPLE A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University April 1993 � c James Popple 1993 Doonesbury (page 131) copyright G. B. Trudeau Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate All rights reserved Earlier versions of some parts of this thesis have appeared in: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australian Computer Science Conference � c Australian Computer Science Association 1990 Advances in Computing and Information: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computing and Information � c International Conference on Computing and Information 1990 The Australian Computer Journal � c Australian Computer Society Inc. 1991 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Popple, James David, 1964– . SHYSTER: a pragmatic legal expert system. Bibliography. Includes indexes. ISBN 0 7315 1827 6. 1. SHYSTER (Computer file). 2. Law — Methodology — Data processing. 3. Expert systems (Computer science). I. Australian National University. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology. Dept of Computer Science. II. Title. 340.11 Except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is my own original work. James Popple 29 April 1993 shy.ster \�shı̄st�(r)\ n -s [prob. after Scheuster fl 1840 Am. attorney frequently rebuked in a New York court for pettifoggery] : one who is professionally unscrupulous esp. in the practice of law or politics . . . Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961)1 shyster (��a�st�(r)) . . . [Of obscure origin. It might be f. shy a. (sense 7, disreputable) + -ster ; but this sense of the adj. is app. not current in the U.S.] . . . ‘A lawyer who practises in an unprofessional or tricky manner; especially, one who haunts the prisons and lower courts to prey on petty criminals; hence, any one who conducts his business in a tricky manner’ (Funk’s Stand. Dict. 1895). Also attrib. or adj. Orig. and chiefly U.S. slang . . . The Oxford English Dictionary (1989)2 shyster. An unscrupulous lawyer (note that the definition presumes the existence of scrupulous ones) . . . The term does not come from—as suggested in various dictionaries—the surname Scheuster, supposedly a lawyer noted for shyster-like practices; from the name of the Shakespearean char­ acter, Shylock; . . . or from any of the various meanings of shy (e.g., to be shy of money). Rather . . . shyster evolved from the underworld use of shiser, a worthless fellow, which derived in turn from the German…