Tag: project: methodology

Evaluations and recommendations in legal research

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I recently gave a talk for the Foundations of Ius Commune programme of the Ius Commune research school. The focus of the talk was on evaluations and recommendations in legal research – how do we approach and justify evaluative conclusions and normative recommendations in legal research?

Legal philosophy and the foundations of ius commune
This lecture focuses on normative evaluations and recommendations in ius commune research, through the lens of legal theory and legal philosophy. It situates evaluative questions such as “should the law change?”, “should harmonization occur?” and recommendations as to the form that changes in the law should take in a broader picture of legal research, emphasising the importance of normative standards in this connection. At the same time, the lecture will also point to how these questions rely on factual and conceptual assumptions about the impact of legal change on society in general. This demonstrates how evaluative questions open legal research to other disciplines.

You can find a pdf of the presentation here. If you have comments or questions about it or would like to discuss, feel free to reach out. (And of course, please assume that any and all nuance lacking in what’s on the page was added in the presentation! 😉)

The dual challenge from AI and the cognitive sciences for law and legal (reasoning) practices

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What do a man claiming that a brain tumour caused his paedophilic behaviour, an AI system called DABUS being recognised as an inventor for the purposes of a patent application, and the modelling of legal reasoning in computational form have in common? They are examples of developments in and increasing insights from the fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences that challenge extant legal (reasoning) practices in various ways. This paper proposes an analytical framework for the purposes of situating these different challenges vis-à-vis each other and our legal (reasoning) practices. The aim of this framework is to facilitate understanding how they relate to each other, what it is they really challenge, and to critically reflect on them.

Waltermann A. 2023. The Dual Challenge from AI and the Cognitive Sciences for Law and Legal
(Reasoning) Practices, in Brigaglia M., Roversi C. (eds.), Legal Reasoning and Cognitive Science: Topics
and Perspectives, «Diritto & Questioni pubbliche», Special Publication, August 2023, forthcoming.
(Preview published online on 19.07.2023)

Identifying assumptions underlying legal arrangements

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Legal arrangements rest on behavioural, cognitive, social, and other assumptions regarding their role and function in society and the legal system. The identification and subsequent evaluation of these assumptions is an important task for legal scholarship. In this article, we focus on the identification and categorisation of these assumptions, providing conceptual distinctions and methodological guidance. We distinguish between assumptions about the value(s), norm(s), or interest(s) underlying a legal arrangement, which can be legal or non-legal, and assumptions about the relationship between the legal arrangement and its underlying value(s), norm(s), or interest(s), which can be logical, causal, or contributory. Regarding the identification, we consider explicit references and inference to the best explanation and theory-driven evaluations as possible methods. Inference to the best explanation, we posit, functions as a manner of reconstructing the theory that the person(s) creating a legal arrangement had in mind regarding the place and function of that legal arrangement in society. Given this, we offer a step-by-step approach to reconstructing this theory in use, drawing from theory-driven evaluations and its sources in the social sciences. These distinctions and guidelines can contribute to understanding the context and untangling the complexities involved in identifying the assumptions that underlie legal arrangements.


Frans L. Leeuw and Antonia M. Waltermann, ‘On Identifying Assumptions Underlying Legal Arrangements’, LaM May 2022, DOI: 10.5553/REM/.000067