The biennial DEON conferences are designed to promote interdisciplinary cooperation amongst scholars interested in linking the formal-logical study of normative concepts and normative systems with computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, organisation theory and law.

In addition to these general themes, DEON2010 will encourage a special focus on the topics:
Deontic Logic and Legal Systems.

There have been nine previous DEON conferences: Amsterdam, December 1991; Oslo, January 1994; Sesimbra, January 1996; Bologna, January 1998; Toulouse, January 2000; London, May 2002; Madeira, May 2004; Utrecht, July 2006, Luxembourg, July 2008.

Selected papers from the conference will be published in special issues of Artificial Intelligence and Law and Journal of Applied Logic.
General Themes

The Program Committee invites papers concerned with the following topics:

* the logical study of normative reasoning, including formal systems of deontic logic, defeasible normative reasoning, the logic of action, and other related areas of logic
* the formal analysis of normative concepts and normative systems
* the formal representation of legal knowledge
* the formal specification of aspects of norm-governed multi-agent systems and autonomous agents, including (but not limited to) the representation of rights, authorisation, delegation, power, responsibility and liability
* the formal specification of normative systems for the management of bureaucratic processes in public or private administration
* applications of normative logic to the specification of database integrity constraints
* normative aspects of protocols for communication, negotiation and multi-agent decision making

Deontic Logic and Legal Systems

DEON2010 has a special focus on logical approaches to deontic notions in computer science in encompassing applications of the Deontic logic concepts and their role in the Legal Systems. Topics of interest in this special theme include, but are not limited to:

* Legal rights
* Completeness and indeterminacy in legal systems
* Kinds of legal norms
* Modelling norms and values
* Legal power and competences
* The dynamic of legal systems
* Compliance and enforcement of obligations
* Contracts and other constitutive acts

We welcome both theoretical work (formal models, representations, specifications, logics, verification) and implementation-oriented work (architectures, programming languages, design models, simulations, prototype systems) on these specific topics.
Submission Details

Authors are invited to submit an original, previously unpublished, research paper pertaining to any of these topics. The paper should be in English, and should be no longer than 15 pages when formatted according the LNCS specifications (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). The first page should contain the full name and contact information for at least one of the authors, and it should contain an abstract of no more than ten lines. Authors should submit their papers electronically using the submission system at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=deon2010

Each submitted paper will be carefully peer-reviewed by a panel of PC member based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition and relevance for the conference.

For each accepted paper, at least one author is required to register for the conference and should plan to present the paper.
Publication

The selected papers will be published in book form in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (approval pending). Copies of the conference proceedings, will be provided to all participants.