In this new pre-print, I argue that we can represent normative positions about adjudication and conceptual stances on legal validity as Venn diagrams.
A Visual Guide to Adjudication and Validity
This paper represents some of the most popular conceptual and normative possibilities about legal rules and legal validity as Venn diagrams. Doing so sheds ligh
papers.ssrn.com
New paper w/ Faisal Feroz, Justin Lim, and @lawstuff.bsky.social. What makes an authority legitimate? *Rules* are legitimate when they benefit their addressees, but *officials* are legitimate when they are selected according to appropriate (but not necessarily democratic) procedure. bit.ly/41LYerL
The Folk Concept of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Approach
Theorists of legitimate authority often appeal to ordinary intuition. Raz claims that the service conception-on which a directive is legitimate when it tracks r
bit.ly
Thanks a lot for the generous and lovely review @izaskoczen.bsky.social !!
Izabela Skoczeń@izaskoczen.bsky.social · 7mo agojuris.jotwell.com/what-is-real-law/ Check out my review of the awesome paper by @lawstuff.bsky.social & @almeida2808.bsky.social, “Lawful, But Not Really: The Dual Character of the Concept of Law”. I am honored to be a contributing editor of JOTWELL, edited by profs. B Bix, K Himma and M Froomkin!
Generous PhD funding at Surrey (SCLP applicants eligible) - fees and stipend (£20,780 per annum). Do share widely! Deadline is April 4, start date Oct 2026. www.surrey.ac.uk/fees-and-fun...
Social Sciences PhD studentships | University of Surrey
surrey.ac.uk
Almeida on Dual Character Concepts, buff.ly/QjZqcuZ - Guilherme Almeida has posted A Defense of Dual Character Concepts in Legal Philosophy and Beyond on SSRN.
I just posted a new pre-print where I argue that dual character concepts are something new and interesting in legal philosophy and beyond and that they can't be reduced to ambiguity, prototypes, or metalinguistic negotiations. Comments are very welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
<span>A defense of dual character concepts in legal philosophy and beyond</span><span></span>
Recent work in jurisprudence claimed that central legal concepts, such as that of LEGAL VALIDITY and of a legal RULE have a dual character structure. Moreover,
papers.ssrn.com
Evidence of Public Acceptance of AI Law Clerks: We investigated how Kenyans evaluate the legitimacy of court decisions when judges rely on AI-generated legal research—versus that of human law clerks. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/
The rule of law or the rule of robots? Nationally representative survey evidence from Kenya
With AI now passing the bar, and with increasing court caseloads worldwide hampering access to justice, there are calls for judges to make use of chatbots to help expedite their work. Such calls po...
tandfonline.com
Experimental Jurisprudence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) plato.stanford.edu/entries/expe...
Experimental Jurisprudence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Experimental jurisprudence (or “X-Jur”) addresses questions of jurisprudence or legal philosophy by complementing traditional philosophical analysis with empirical methods. Often those methods…
plato.stanford.edu
This is a job in political theory/philosophy that is specifically for someone interested in empirical work. Looks perfect for folks doing experimental philosophy
enzo rossi@enzoreds.bsky.social · last yr.Political theory/philosophy job in our Department! Deadline 26 May. Happy to answer questions by email. werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...
oh wow wow wow. Wow. It's officially out, after many years: "Loopholes: A window into value alignment and the communication of meaning" authors.elsevier.com/c/1k~vV_Ebvv... Read on for a brief summary, but I encourage you to read the thing itself.
Now out @ Journal of Research in Personality (free until June): authors.elsevier.com/a/1k%7EqWL4L... We found evidence that trait empathy correlates with purposivism in rule violation judgments. Also: most people share a single concept that seems to have a dual character structure.
authors.elsevier.com
Guilherme Almeida@almeida2808.bsky.social · 3y agobit.ly/3SbTEgY New pre-print w/ @lawstuff.bsky.social and Ivar Hannikainen on the psychology of rule violation. We found that trait empathy is associated with purposivism. Importantly, that association happens within a shared framework, as most participants take both text and purpose into account.
The long awaited results of the Brazilian Reproducibility Network are in! Their final sample consists of 97 replications of 47 studies. The only coherent measure of replication, p<.05, shows a replication rate of 19%. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Short thread on the latest paper led by @joseluiz.bsky.social w/ @lawstuff.bsky.social: arxiv.org/abs/2503.00992 The paper addresses two issues w/ previous machine psychology papers (including our own): 1) are LLMs mastering concepts, or are they memorizing the data? 1/14
Evidence of conceptual mastery in the application of rules by Large Language Models
In this paper we leverage psychological methods to investigate LLMs' conceptual mastery in applying rules. We introduce a novel procedure to match the diversity of thought generated by LLMs to that ob...
arxiv.org
📢 New publication by Piotr Bystranowski from INCET in open access: "Self-absorbed, yet interesting? A bibliometric study on general jurisprudence" journals.openedition.org/revus/10886
Self-absorbed, yet interesting?
General jurisprudence – the part of legal philosophy dealing with the most general and abstract questions about law – is increasingly characterised in terms of stagnation, lack of progress and fixa...
journals.openedition.org
New paper with @joseluiz.bsky.social and @almeida2808.bsky.social showing that AI possesses the concept of rule. We find that generative AI emulates how humans apply rules to novel situations in which a rule's letter and spirit conflict. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Evidence of conceptual mastery in the application of rules by Large Language Models
In this paper we leverage psychological methods to investigate LLMs' conceptual mastery in applying rules. We introduce a novel procedure to match the diversity
papers.ssrn.com
Our incredibly short (5 page) paper on intuitions about consent — with Joanna Demaree-Cotton and @rosesomm.bsky.social We find cases where people agree that both: (a) There’s a sense in a which a person clearly consented (b) In deeper sense, she did not consent at all osf.io/63d8s
New study with Joanna Demaree-Cotton and Josh Knobe!
Experimental Philosophy@xphilosopher.bsky.social · 2y agoOur incredibly short (5 page) paper on intuitions about consent — with Joanna Demaree-Cotton and @rosesomm.bsky.social We find cases where people agree that both: (a) There’s a sense in a which a person clearly consented (b) In deeper sense, she did not consent at all osf.io/63d8s
Abstracts due this Saturday!
Ethan Landes@ethanlandes.bsky.social · 2y agoThe 2025 Euro #Xphi conference has just been announced for July 10-12 at University of East Anglia. The subfield is very friendly and supportive, and so I highly recommend the conference, especially if you are just starting out your empirical journey x-phi.uea.ac.uk/EuroX-Phi202... #philsky
New paper led by Priscila Andrade investigating different theories about precedent. bit.ly/4hH6QpJ Whether the law has changed with a new decision depends on your concept of precedent. When facts are the same and the outcome differs, the law has changed, but what about other combinations?
My piece yesterday in Aeon: a 3000-word "love song for philosophy", arguing that the our species' capacity to wonder philosophically, even when we make no progress toward answers, is the most intrinsically awesome thing about planet Earth. Philosophy needs no other excuse. aeon.co/essays/if-yo...
If you ask ‘Why?’, you’re a philosopher, and you’re awesome | Aeon Essays
Diving into the ring of darkness beyond things easily answerable, asking ‘Why?’ questions is what make humans awesome
aeon.co
Does reflecting on the consequences of real-world controversies shift moral opinions? Does it lead to progress or, at least, consensus? Find out in our @cogscisociety.bsky.social blog post: cognitivesciencesociety.org/consequences... w/ P. Bystranowski, I. Hannikainen & J. Rueda
Consequences and Convictions: Testing the Impact of Reflection on Ethical Beliefs - Cognitive Science Society
Welcome to CogSci Unpacked, an exciting blog series dedicated to summarizing academic papers from the Cognitive Science, a CSS Journal. Our goal is to bridge the gap between academia and the broader p...
cognitivesciencesociety.org
Now the #ExperimentalPhilosophy Society session! @almeida2808.bsky.social presented #xJur data with @lawstuff.bsky.social and Ivar Hannikainen: "Trait #Empathy Predicts Purposivist Rule Application" Results in image #altText #openAccess preprint: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn... #xPhi #law #textualism
The 2025 Euro #Xphi conference has just been announced for July 10-12 at University of East Anglia. The subfield is very friendly and supportive, and so I highly recommend the conference, especially if you are just starting out your empirical journey x-phi.uea.ac.uk/EuroX-Phi202... #philsky
5th European Experimental Philosophy Conference
A group of experimental philosophers at the University of East Anglia
x-phi.uea.ac.uk
Blueksy! I will be recruiting a PhD student and a lab manager in the Fall of 2025. The lab will study rules and curiosity from a moral psychology lens—exploring how we judge rule-breakers, reason about rules, and what sparks our curiosity in the moral domain.
Amazing work led by @neeleengelmann.bsky.social. Super proud to be a part of it!!
neele engelmann@neeleengelmann.bsky.social · 2y agoOut now in Cognitive Science: We investigate how people think judges should handle immoral laws. Should judges follow the law no matter what, or can exceptions be made for (grossly) immoral laws? We surveyed 167 laypeople and 141 participants with legal training to find out.
'The Rule of Law or the Rule of Robots? Nationally Representative Survey Evidence from Kenya' papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... We report a vignette-based experiment (N 2,246) which finds that judicial reliance on AI law clerks is considered no less acceptable than reliance on human ones.
The Rule of Law or the Rule of Robots? Nationally Representative Survey Evidence from Kenya
With AI now passing the bar, and with court caseloads worldwide hampering access to justice, there are calls for judges to make use of chatbots to help expedite
papers.ssrn.com
New experimental jurisprudence result: People are drawn to an extreme version of the natural law’ thesis If a behavior is morally wrong, then even if there’s no statute banning it, people think there’s a sense in which it is unlawful (!) www.researchgate.net/publication/...
