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Réka Markovich

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12 papers

2 author rows

AAMAS Conference 2026 Conference Paper

Balancing for Agent Decision Making through Argumentation

Liuwen Yu
Chenyang Cai
Réka Markovich
Leendert van der Torre

This paper builds bridges between reason-based normative reasoning and formal argumentation, by formalizing Tucker’s ethical theory and evaluating the strength of arguments via weighted reasons and tournament semantics. We characterize conditions under which various formulations of permissibility and detachment coincide, and we analyze independence properties that make these equivalences hold. We show that Tucker’s input–output “balancing” mechanism, developed for ethics, provides a domain-neutral model of practical reasoning that explains when multiple options are permissible and how to choose among them. As an outlook, we sketchhowthemechanismappliestodiscretionaryjudicialdecision making (e. g. , child custody), without claiming that Tucker’s ethical theory itself applies to law; instead, the argumentation-based abstraction transfers across normative domains.

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AAMAS Conference 2026 Conference Paper

Disobedience in Normative Multi-agent Systems

Marija Slavkovik
Liuwen Yu
Leon van der Torre
Réka Markovich
Beishui Liao

An intelligent agent should be able to disobey the norms of its environment. We define disobedience as an act of intentional norm violation and we postulate the distinctions among four types of disobedience: direct violation, justified exception, civil disobedience, and trolling. Each type requires a distinct monitoring workflow: direct violations are sanctioned, exceptions are waived, civil disobedience is sanctioned but also logged as a reform signal, and trolls are sanctioned but excluded from reform processes. To capture this, we formalize a compliance management architecture that separates monitoring of observable behaviour, assessment of disobedience type, and dispatching to the appropriate enforcement workflow. This separation clarifies the dual perspective: agents use reasonbased practical reasoning to decide whether to obey or disobey, while the governance framework processes observable outcomes and routes them into differentiated institutional responses.

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AAMAS Conference 2026 Conference Paper

Formalizing Mental Privacy in LogiKEy

Luca Pasetto
Christoph Benzmüller
Réka Markovich

Neurotechnology and AI are expanding how systems can access and influence mental states, raising concerns about mental privacy. Yet the legal status of a right to mental privacy remains unsettled: it is often treated as a special case of the right to privacy, while others argue it is grounded in freedom of thought, which protects against coercion to disclose or adopt beliefs. Despite the regulatory and technological stakes, it is unclear how these epistemic rights formally interact or how autonomous systems can reason about them. We address this by introducing a Logic for Mental Privacy (LMP) that integrates multi-modal formalizations of the right to privacyandfreedomofthoughtasepistemicclaim-rights. Wemechanize LMP in Isabelle/HOL via shallow semantical embeddings in Higher-Order Logic within the LogiKEy framework, and use automated reasoning to study its normative consequences. A case study shows how access to cognitive data can steer belief formation while remaining compliant with duties on explicitly protected content, yielding an indirect compromise of freedom of thought and exposing a normative gap around mental privacy. Overall, we show how legal knowledge representation and automated reasoning can inform debates on neurotechnology governance and support the design and analysis of normative multiagent systems.

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FLAP Journal 2025 Journal Article

A Dynamic Logic of the Right to Know

Xu Li
Réka Markovich

Different meanings of the “right to know” can be distinguished based on the theory of normative positions. In this paper, we focus on one of them: the power to know. Intuitively, in a sender-receiver setting, the receiver’s power to know whether φ is the case means that the sender is obliged to (truthfully) announce the answer if the receiver asks the question φ? . Therefore, we de- velop a logic called LRK for reasoning about the power to know, the obligatory announcements, and the dynamics of questions and public announcements.

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ECAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Reasoning with Epistemic Rights and Duties: Automating a Dynamic Logic of the Right to Know in LogiKEy

Lara Lawniczak
Luca Pasetto
Christoph Benzmüller
Xu Li 0037
Réka Markovich

It is not straightforward to reason about specific legal concepts such as epistemic rights and duties, which are crucial in AI systems that have to make autonomous decisions based on who knows what, who is entitled to know, and under what conditions information should be shared or withheld. Such issues are central to responsible AI, data governance, and regulatory compliance. A concrete application arises is in the context of the GDPR, where a data subject has a right to know whether and for what purpose her personal data is being processed, creating a duty to tell for the controller when asked. On the other hand, if the software used for the processing is proprietary, the data subject does not have the right to know its exact mechanisms, so her asking to know them does not create a corresponding duty for the data controller. In this paper, a shallow semantical embedding (SSE) of the Dynamic Logic of the Right to Know (LRK) in Higher-Order Logic is presented. The embedding is proven faithful, and it is encoded and experimented with in the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant. The SSE is then used to reason with the GDPR example encoded in LRK. The embedding of LRK differs from existing ones in how it represents the dynamic updating of the model: instead of performing changes on the domain of possible worlds, the provided SSE maintains the accessibility and neighborhood relations within the context of a formula. Updates are then handled by updating the relations, while the domain of possible worlds stays the same. The work presented in this paper contributes to the LogiKEy knowledge engineering methodology and framework, which enables experimentation with logics and logic combinations, with general and domain knowledge, and with concrete use cases.

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FLAP Journal 2025 Journal Article

Thirteen Challenges in Formal and Computational Argumentation

Liuwen Yu
Leendert van der Torre
Réka Markovich

In this paper, we present thirteen challenges in formal and computational argumentation. They are organized around Dung’s attack-defense paradigm shift. First, we describe four challenges pertaining to the diversity of argumen- tation. Then we discuss five challenges regarding the attack-defense paradigm shift. Finally, we discuss four challenges for computational AI argumentation arising after the paradigm shift. We illustrate these challenges using examples from machine ethics, AI & Law, decision-making, linguistics, philosophy, and other disciplines to illustrate the breadth of argumentation research. We end each challenge by presenting several open questions for further research.

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FLAP Journal 2022 Journal Article

Defeasible Deontic Logic: Arguing about Permission and Obligation.

Huimin Dong
Beishui Liao
Réka Markovich
Leendert van der Torre

Defeasible deontic logic uses techniques from non-monotonic logic to address various challenges in normative reasoning, such as prima facie permissions and obligations, moral dilemmas, deontic detachment, contrary-to-duty reasoning and legal interpretation. In this article, we use formal argumentation to design defeasible deontic logics, based on two classical deontic logics. In particular, we use the ASPIC+ structured argumentation theory to define non-monotonic variants of well-understood monotonic modal logics. We illustrate the ASPIC+ based approach and the resulting defeasible deontic logics using argumentation about strong permission.

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KR Conference 2022 Conference Paper

Dynamic Deontic Logic for Permitted Announcements

Xu Li
Dov Gabbay
Réka Markovich

In this paper, we introduce and study a dynamic deontic logic for permitted announcements. In our logic framework, it is permitted to announce something if announcing it would not lead to forbidden knowledge. It is shown that the logic is not compact, and we propose a sound and weakly complete Hilbert-style axiomatisation. We also study the computational complexity of the model checking problem and the decidability of the satisfiability problem. Finally, we introduce a neighbourhood semantics with a strongly complete axiomatisation.

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LORI Conference 2019 Conference Paper

From Classical to Non-monotonic Deontic Logic Using ASPIC +

Huimin Dong
Beishui Liao
Réka Markovich
Leendert W. N. van der Torre

Abstract In this paper we use formal argumentation to design non-monotonic deontic logics, based on two monotonic deontic logics. In particular, we use the structured argumentation theory ASPIC \(^+\) to define non-monotonic variants of well-understood modal logics. We illustrate the approach using argumentation about free-choice permission.

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FLAP Journal 2019 Journal Article

Rights and Punishment: The Hohfeldian Theory's Applicability and Morals in Understanding Criminal Law.

Réka Markovich

It is often suggested that criminal law is a limitation of the general applicability of the Hohfeldian theory of rights and duties and their correlativity. The first part of this paper shows how a formalization of normative positions and a clear understanding of how rights work refuses this thesis. This part leads us to the notion of sanction. The second part of the paper presents an analysis of sanction in terms of rights and duties in order to resolve the seemingly paradoxical situation of the legal systems in which one has the right to escape from the prison.

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FLAP Journal 2019 Journal Article

Two Limitations in Legal Knowledge Base Constructing and Formalizing Law.

Réka Markovich

Extracting norms from legislative texts confronts us many tasks and requires decisions about approaches, methods, tools, and legal theoretical presuppositions. In this paper I present some examples from the Hungarian legislation showing how challenging sometimes the wording of these texts is from the viewpoint of norm extracting, then I present two limitations we need to face when dealing with this task. On the one hand, I argue that isomorphism cannot be upheld, but it is not necessary to have a faithful formalization. On the other, I argue that however appealing to base on constitutive norms is when formalizing—in order to avoid the necessity of normative reasoning, for instance—the consequential application of their theory in the approach leads us to a very controversial situation.

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AILAW Journal 2018 Journal Article

Research in progress: report on the ICAIL 2017 doctoral consortium

Maria Dymitruk
Réka Markovich
Rūta Liepiņa
Mirna El Ghosh
Robert van Doesburg
Guido Governatori
Bart Verheij

Abstract This paper arose out of the 2017 international conference on AI and law doctoral consortium. There were five students who presented their Ph. D. work, and each of them has contributed a section to this paper. The paper offers a view of what topics are currently engaging students, and shows the diversity of their interests and influences.

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