We are pleased to present to you the proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems – JURIX 2022. For more than three decades, the JURIX conferences have been held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Based Systems (www.jurix.nl). Traditionally based in Europe, in the time JURIX has become an international forum for academics and professionals to exchange knowledge and experiences at the intersection of Law and Artificial Intelligence. Over the years, JURIX has witnessed the growing interest of the research community and the industry in technological advances on legal knowledge representation, computational models of legal reasoning, evidential reasoning, argumentation, case-based and rule-based reasoning, machine learning and natural language processing for legal knowledge acquisition, big data and data analysis, open data and the semantic web in the legal domain, online dispute resolution, legal document management and information retrieval, knowledge discovery, data mining, as well as cybersecurity, privacy, trust and blockchain methods.

The 2022 edition of JURIX, which runs from 14–16 December, is hosted by the Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. This edition marks an important milestone, because it coincides with a relative return to normal after the challenges of the Covid-19 crisis: in fact it will be the first conference of the series of the AI&Law community events expected to be held fully in presence again.

For this edition, we have received 62 submissions from 163 authors of 24 countries. 14 of these submissions were selected for publication as long papers (10 pages), 22 as short papers (6 pages) and 5 as demo papers (4 pages) for a total of 41 presentations. This is the result of a balance between inclusiveness and a very competitive and rigorous review process, which was carried out by a Program Committee composed by 72 recognised experts in the field. The result was a total acceptance rate (long, short and demo papers) of 66.1%, which testifies the overall good quality of the submissions, with 22.5% acceptance rate for long papers.

The accepted papers cover a broad array of topics, from argumentation and legal reasoning, to legal ontologies and semantic web; from machine and deep learning to natural language processing for legal knowledge extraction, as well as argument mining and translation of legal texts; from defeasible logic, legal compliance and explainable AI, to alternative dispute resolution, legal drafting and smart contracts.

Three invited speakers, from different and complementary areas (industry, European institutions and academia), have honored JURIX 2022, by kindly accepting to deliver their keynote lectures: Martin Rollinger, Paul Nemitz and Mireille Hildebrandt.

Martin Rollinger is the CEO of Sinc, a leading company in Germany in the implementation of AI and legal informatics in the judiciary. In the past 20 years, he’s been involved with numerous e-Government projects in domains such as education, law enforcement, intelligence and environmental management. He has been responsible for one of the largest projects in the digitization of German courts and public prosecutors offices and has been actively involved in building tools and products in the AI and law space for the past 10+ years.

Paul Nemitz is the Principal Advisor in the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. He was appointed in April 2017, following a 6-year appointment as Director for Fundamental Rights and Citizen’s Rights in the same Directorate General. As Director, Paul Nemitz led the reform of Data Protection legislation in the EU, the negotiations of the EU – US Privacy Shield and the negotiations with major US Internet Companies of the EU Code of Conduct against incitement to violence and hate speech on the Internet. He is a Member of Commission for Media and Internet Policy of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Berlin and a visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe in Bruges. Paul is also a Member of the Board of the Verein Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V., Berlin and a Trustee of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Arthur Langerman Foundation, Berlin.

Mireille Hildebrandt is Research Professor on ‘Interfacing Law and Technology’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), appointed by the VUB Research Council, and co-Director of the Research Group on Law Science Technology and Society studies (LSTS) at the Faculty of Law and Criminology. Mireille also holds the part-time Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Science Faculty, at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research interests concern the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies.

As tradition, also this year JURIX has been accompanied by satellite co-located events including workshops, tutorials and a Doctoral Consortium. We thank the workshops and tutorial organizers for their excellent proposals and for the effort involved in organizing the events. This year’s edition comprises 1 tutorial “AI and Machine Learning – their benefits and drawbacks for use in ODR” and 6 workshops: AICOL 2022 – “AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems”; SORO – “Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Governance for Social Robots”; WAICOM – “Workshop on AI Compliance Mechanism”; LDA 2022 – “CEILI Workshop on Legal Data Analysis”; LN2FR – “Methodologies for Translating Legal Norms into Formal Representations”; AMPM 2022 “2nd Workshop in Agent-based Modeling & Policy-Making”. AICOL is at its 14th edition and, traditionally, it represents a space to discuss models of legal knowledge more suitable to the complexity of contemporary legal systems. SORO is a new workshop which stems from a Japanese project about the governance for social robots through interdisciplinary approaches, including ethical considerations like deception, privacy, safety, etc. from their close interactions with humans. WAICOM represents a somehow related workshop which discusses legal and technical solutions about the adherence of AI’s behaviour to legal and ethical principles. LDA, at its 8th edition, intends to focus on representation, analysis and reasoning with legal data. LN2FR explores the various challenges connected with the task of using formal languages and models to represent legal norms in a machine-readable manner. Finally, AMPM, at its 2nd edition, aims to create space for agent-based modeling, exploiting computation to investigate factual underpinnings of the legal phenomenon, like the intricate networks of cognitive, social, technological, and legal mechanisms through which law emerges, is applied, and exerts its effects.

Moreover, since 2013 and also this year, JURIX has offered young researchers, entering the AI&Law field as Ph.D. students, the opportunity to present their work during the Doctoral Consortium session, which represents an effective environment of growth and tutoring. For the coordination of this event, our special thanks go to Monica Palmirani, Doctoral Consortium Chair and untiring coordinator of the Joint International Doctoral Degree in Law, Science and Technology (LAST-JD).

Organizing this edition of the conference would not have been possible without the support of many people and institutions. Special thanks are due to the local organizing team of the Institute of Legal Informatics at Saarland University, chaired by Georg Borges and Christoph Sorge, and to the Faculty of Law at Saarland University for sponsoring the event.

Moreover, we are particularly grateful to the 72 members of the Program Committee for their commitment and excellent work in a rigorous review process, including their active participation in the discussions concerning borderline papers. Finally, we would like to thank the former and current JURIX executive and steering committee members for their continuous support and advice, as well as for sharing experiences and suggestions about JURIX organization challenges.

Enrico Francesconi, JURIX 2022 Program Chair

Georg Borges, JURIX 2022 Conference Co-Chair

Christoph Sorge, JURIX 2022 Conference Co-Chair