Multi-criteria Analysis in Legal Reasoning

Bengt Lindell, Professor of Civil and Criminal Procedure, Faculty of Law, Uppsala University, Sweden

Providing an accessible introduction to the application of multi-criteria analysis in law, this book illustrates how simple additive weighing, a well known method in decision theory, can be used in problem structuring, analysis and decision support for overall assessments and balancing of interests in the context of law.

“毫无保留地推荐咕咕叫iculum textbook, as well as supplemental studies reading lists for novice lawyers, Multi-Criteria Analysis in Legal Reasoning is a critically important addition to law firm, college, and university library Contemporary Judicial Studies collections.’
– Midwest Book Review

‘This is a highly original approach to a pressing problem of legal reasoning: how to decide in a context in which many different values and interests need to be considered. The interdisciplinary approach chosen, using decision theory and adapting it to a legal context, provides a fresh perspective on important issues such as balancing of interests and weighting of different legal values. Firmly grounded in Scandinavian discussions of legal reasoning and the international literature on decision theory, it is particularly relevant to administrative legal decisions, but it may also be relevant to judicial decision-making in private or criminal law.’
– Sanne Taekema, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

‘Law is about balancing of interests. How to do this is considered mainly to be a matter of intuition. This book offers a structured method based on decision theory and fuzzy logic. It helps lawyers to balance interests and make choices in complex cases in a systematic way, even when the weighting is based on subjective ratings and opinions differ fundamentally. The method of multi-criteria analysis is explained in a very clear and accessible way and applied to several legal and other cases.’
– Bart van Klink, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands