Multi-criteria Analysis in Legal Reasoning

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.

Through clear illustrations and a variety of concrete examples, this book shows how simple additive weighing can be applied in any situation in which there are one or more objectives, multiple options and multiple decision criteria. Further demonstrating the use of fuzzy logic in conjunction with this method, Bengt Lindell adeptly shows the reader how extra-disciplinary methods have much to contribute in a legal decision-making context. The methods covered in this book help to balance the issues of intuition versus structural analysis, risk and uncertainty, and the merging of probability and utility in the context of law.

Practical and engaging, this book will prove an indispensible guide for academics and scholars across many legal disciplines. Public and private decision makers will also benefit from its clear and concise approach, affording them new insights into the application of multi-criteria analysis in law.