Weak Permission Is Not Well-Founded, Grounded, and Stable

Abstract

We investigate the notion of weak permission as the failure to derive the obligation for the contrary. In particular, we focus on the issue of whether a weak permission should be derivable in the presence of a deontic conflict. Then, we investigate weak permission from the point of view of non-monotonic reasoning. Specifically, we look at two of the most popular paradigms for non-monotonic reasoning: logic programming and structured argumentation; and the commonly adopted semantics for each of them: well-founded and (skeptical) stable semantics for logic programming and grounded and stable semantics for structured argumentation. We prove that it is not possible to capture weak permission in the presence of deontic conflicts under these semantics. The results of our analysis have implications for the design of Rules as Code initiatives and computational law systems, as they highlight a fundamental tension between the logical treatment of deontic conflicts and the normative requirements of legitimate legal systems.

Received: 8 May 2026 | Revised: 6 August 2026 | Accepted: 28 September 2026

Conflicts of Interest

Guido Governatori is the Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Computational Law and Legal Technology and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article, who has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Author Contribution Statement

Guido Governatori: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization.