Legal Facts in Argumentation-Based Litigation Games

This paper analyzes legal fact-argumentation in the framework of the argumentation-based litigation game (ALG) by Xiong (Leg Sci 370(9):16–19, 2012). Rather than as an ontological one, an ALG treats a legal fact as a fact-qua-claim whose acceptability depends on the reasons supporting it. In constructing their facts-qua-claims, parties to an ALG must interact to maintain a game-theoretic equilibrium. We compare the general interactional constraints that the civil (a.k.a. ‘continental’) and common law systems assign, and detail what the civil, administrative, and criminal codes of mainland China require of the suitor (S), the respondent (R), and the trier (T) to establish their respective S-, R- and T-facts. We also offer an improved version of the legal syllogism.