ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss research in connectionism and neurophysiology and examine the potential implications for understanding and representing legal knowledge. Artificial intelligence approaches such as rule-based and case-based while adequate for representing knowledge in the legal function, have proven insufficient for representation of complex, large-scale legal decision making systems that assimilate a variety of inputs. This chapter contributes to three important goals: examination of the legal decision process as a special instance of human decision making, potential use of connectionist approaches to representation of legal knowledge and moving toward comprehensive, unified conceptual frameworks for research.
