We are very glad to present the proceedings volume of the 28th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2015). For more than 25 years, the JURIX conference has provided an international forum for academics and practitioners for the advancement of cutting edge research in the interface between law and computer technologies. The JURIX conferences are held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems: JURIX 2015 took place at the Universidade do Minho Law School, Braga, Portugal, on 10–11 December. Special thanks go to Francisco Andrade (Law School, University of Minho), Paulo Novais (Department of Informatics, School of Engineering, University of Minho), and their team for inviting us, hosting the event and for making this conference possible.

The contributions in this volume include a selection of 14 full papers (10 pages each), 9 short papers (4 pages), and 9 posters (2 pages each) chosen from a pool of 62 submissions by 139 authors from 24 countries. The accepted papers address a wide range of topics in legal informatics and fall within the following three major tracks: theory and foundations of AI & Law (focusing on themes such as argumentation, reasoning, norms and evidence), technology of AI & Law (presenting technological advancements and new solutions for AI & Law), and applications of AI & Law (describing implementations of AI & Law technology in real world systems). The accepted papers were carefully selected after a rigorous peer-review process where each paper was evaluated by a panel of at least three members of the international Program Committee. We thank the reviewers for their effort and very valuable contribution; without them it would not be possible to maintain and improve the high scientific standard the conference has now achieved. We thank the authors for submitting good papers, responding to the reviewers' comments, and abiding by our production schedule.

Our two invited speakers this year were Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and Kasey Chappelle, Global Privacy Officer and Director of Commercial Compliance at American Express Global Business Travel. We are very grateful to them for having accepted our invitation and for their interesting and inspiring talks.

JURIX 2015 also hosted the Doctoral Consortium, which was in its third edition. This initiative was meant to attract and promote PhD researchers in the area of AI & Law and so to enrich the community with innovative and fresh contributions. Many thanks to Monica Palmirani for organising it once again this year.

The conference was preceded by six co-located workshops and a tutorial. The 3rd International Workshop Network Analysis in Law (NAiL 2015) built on the achievements of the first edition held at ICAIL 2013 in Rome and the second edition at JURIX 2014 in Krakow. After the success of the previous editions, the fourth International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and IP Law (AIIP IV) brought together researchers in copyright law and copyright enforcement with experts in AI and law. The Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and the Complexity of Legal Systems (AICOL), now in its sixth edition, is a well-established event having the aim of developing models of legal knowledge more suitable to the complexity of contemporary legal systems. The Workshop on Legal Data Analysis of the Central European Institute of Legal Informatics (CEILI) intended to focus on representation, analysis and reasoning of legal data in huge text corpora and information systems. The Workshop on Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence encompassed topics such as the practical challenges concerning the collection, preservation and use of digital evidence in courts. The Workshop on Privacy and Data Protection gathered people from the economic operators, academia, national data protection authorities and legal practitioners to debate the new ways of interaction between citizens, corporations and national states through ICT and its implications in the fundamental rights. We furthermore hosted a tutorial on Coding Smart Contracts for the Blockchain, an important and emergent topic in legal informatics and computer law.

The JURIX 2015 conference was supported by CIIDH (Interdisciplinary Center in Human Rights), Justicrime (Lusophone Institute of Criminal Justice), and ELSA Uminho (European Law Students Association): many thanks to them, whose support helped us to organise this event, and whose technical support contributed to attract many high-quality submissions.

Antonino Rotolo

CIRSFID, University of Bologna, Italy