We are pleased to present the proceedings of JURIX 2023, the 36th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems. Organised under the auspices of the Foundation for Legal Knowledge-Based Systems (unmapped: uri https://www.jurix.nl), the JURIX annual conference has become established as an internationally renowned forum for the exchange of ideas concerning theoretical models and practical applications in the broadly construed domain of artificial intelligence (AI) and law research, including legal information-system and legal-knowledge-system research. Traditionally, the field of AI & Law has been concerned with legal knowledge representation and engineering, logic, computational models of legal reasoning, legal data analytics, and legal information retrieval, but recent years have witnessed the rise to prominence of the application of machine-learning tools to legally relevant tasks. Furthermore, the constantly growing influence of AI on different spheres of society has prompted interest in the explainability, trustworthiness and responsibility of computational systems within the community. Indeed, since the first editions, JURIX conferences have become a venue for interdisciplinary research and the integration of methods, approaches, and conceptual frameworks from different branches of computer science and jurisprudence, including cognitive and socio-technical dimensions.

The 2023 edition of JURIX, which runs from 18 to 20 December, is hosted by the Maastricht Law and Tech Lab of Maastricht University (UM) in Maastricht, the Netherlands. We received 92 submissions by 248 authors from 32 countries for this edition, of which 18 were selected for publication as long papers (10 pages), 30 as short papers (6 pages), and 7 as demo papers (4 pages). This translates into an acceptance rate of 19.5% for long papers and 52.1% for long and short papers. This is the result of a balance between inclusiveness and a competitive and rigorous review process, which was carried out by a Program Committee composed of 80 recognised experts in the field. The accepted papers cover a wide range of topics, including formal approaches (case-based reasoning, deontic logic, formal argumentation, and other formalisms) applied to various aspects of legal reasoning, machine learning (large language models, including conversational) and information-retrieval methods applied to various natural-language processing tasks, hybrid approaches working on the frontiers between symbolic and sub-symbolic methods, experimental inquiries into the interfaces between computational systems and legal systems, and network analysis in law.

Three invited speakers from different and complementary areas honoured JURIX 2023 by kindly agreeing to deliver their keynote lectures: prof. Jaap Hage, prof. Piek Vossen, and prof. Iris van Rooij.

Jaap Hage is emeritus professor of Legal Theory at Maastricht University. His research is focused on legal logic, with an emphasis on the logic of rules, basic legal concepts (ontology of law), and social ontology. His publications include the following books: ‘Reasoning with Rules’ (1997), ‘Studies in Legal Logic’ (2005), and ‘Foundations and Building Blocks of Law’ (2018). Jaap was also one of the early participants in JURIX, as well as its program chair in 1995.

Piek Vossen is professor in Computational Lexicology at the VU (Free University) Amsterdam, and head of the Computational Linguistics & Text Mining Lab. His groundwork on cross-language conceptual modelling and interoperability led him to found the Global-WordNet-Association (GWA) for building WordNets in languages and connecting these through semantic graphs. Funded by the prestigious Spinoza prize (2013), he studied three foundations for language understanding: identity, reference, and perspective, resulting in the GraSP model as the ‘theory-of-mind’ for robots communicating with people within the Hybrid Intelligence gravitation programme.

Iris van Rooij is professor of Computational Cognitive Science at Radboud University, and principal investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. She is also a Guest Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Semiotics, and the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research interests lie at the interface of psychology, philosophy and theoretical computer science, with a focus on the theoretical foundations of the computational explanations of cognition.

This year, continuing a tradition, JURIX has also been accompanied by satellite co-located events: four workshops (ALP 2023, AI & Access to Justice, AI4Legs-II, Annotation of Legal Data), and the Doctoral Consortium. ALP 2023 – the first workshop on AI, Law and Philosophy – aims to take the time for philosophical reflection on where we stand and what can be expected from the interaction between AI and Law. The workshop brings together young researchers and experienced experts interested in the interface between AI, law and philosophy, aiming to connect contemporary tracks of research in the fields of AI and Law to the tradition of computational legal theory. The AI & Access to Justice workshop aims to bring together lawyers, computer scientists, and social-science researchers to discuss findings and proposals around how AI might be used to improve access to justice, as well as how to hold AI models accountable for the public good. AI4Legs-II – the second Workshop on AI for Legislation – aims to discuss the state-of-the-art of the most advanced applications of AI in support of better regulation and law-making systems, applying interdisciplinary instruments drawn from the philosophy of law, constitutional law, legal informatics, AI & Law, computational linguistics, computer science, HCI, and legal design. The Annotation of Legal Data Workshop aims to provide a platform for in-depth discussions, knowledge sharing, demonstrations, and practical insights into the challenges and opportunities of annotating legal data. The workshop is designed to bring together researchers and experts interested in exploring the nuances of annotating legal data, focusing on topics such as software tools, annotator training, inter-rater and intra-rater reliability, and the publication of data and metadata.

Organising this conference edition would not have been possible without the support of many people and institutions. Special thanks are due to the local team of Gijs van Dijck, Jerry Spanakis, Konrad Kollnig, Aurelia Tamo-Larrieux, the Maastricht Law and Tech Lab, and the Law Events Office at Maastricht University. We would like to thank the workshop organisers for their proposals and for the effort involved in arranging the events. We owe our gratitude to Monica Palmirani, who kindly assumed the function of the Doctoral Consortium Chair, and we are particularly grateful to the 80 members of the Program Committee for their work in the rigorous review process and for their participation in the discussions. Finally, we would like to thank the former JURIX and ICAIL program chairs for their support and advice, and the current JURIX executive committee and steering committee members for their support, advice, and for taking care of all JURIX initiatives.

Giovanni Sileno, JURIX 2023 Program chair

Jerry Spanakis, JURIX 2023 Local co-chair

Gijs van Dijck, JURIX 2023 Local co-chair