ProEthica: A Professional Role Based Ethical Analysis Tool Using LLM-Orchestrated, Ontology Supported Case Based Reasoning

Abstract Professional ethics committees currently lack structured tools to identify relevant ethical concepts from complex narratives and compare them against prior decisions. ProEthica analyzes professional ethical scenarios against established codes and precedent cases. The system uses large language models (LLMs), leveraging their natural language processing capabilities to extract nine types of components (Roles, Principles, Obligations, States, Resources, Actions, Events, Capabilities, and Constraints) from case text and scenario descriptions. Domain-specific ontologies provide precise definitions that constrain LLM output to match formal concept specifications, ensuring consistency across extraction and validation. Case-based reasoning identifies precedent cases and analogous situations relevant to the scenario under analysis. The current implementation processes engineering ethics cases with complete provenance tracking and ontology-driven validation. The framework supports extension to other professional domains with established codes and precedent systems.