Fuller and the Folk: The Inner Morality of Law Revisited

Abstract

Forthcoming in T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, & S. Nichols (Eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 3. Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press.

Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

“…In sum, generalizing the findings of Donelson & Hannikainen (2020), participants in the Possible condition tended to report that laws could not violate various procedural principles even while participants in the Actual condition recognized that they often do.…”

“…Our primary prediction, sample size determination and analysis plan were pre-registered at aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=ev6nk8. Inspired by previous findings (Donelson & Hannikainen, 2020), we hypothesized greater endorsement of procedural principles in the Possible condition than in the Actual condition.…”

“…The stimuli were adapted from Donelson & Hannikainen (2020) and translated into eight additional languages by native speakers: Dutch, German, Hindi, Khmer, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Site collaborators were asked to iteratively compare oral back-translations into English against the original materials.…”

Are There Cross‐Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

“…The stimuli were adapted from Donelson and Hannikainen (2020) and translated into eight additional languages by native speakers: Dutch, German, Hindi, Khmer, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Site collaborators were asked to iteratively compare oral backtranslations (into English) against the original materials.…”

“…Philosophers of law have recurrently debated the question of whether laws must meet certain procedural requirements, but the corresponding body of empirical evidence examining whether the concept of law exhibits such constraints is meager. One recent study-which inspired the present attempt at cross-cultural generalization-did reveal that lawyers and laypeople in the United States consider the procedural principles illustrated in Fuller's (1964) writings to be, in a paradoxical sense, essential to the law (Donelson & Hannikainen, 2020).…”