Scholarship

Articles/Chapters/Essays

"Moral Grammar and Human Rights: Some Reflections on Cognitive Science and Englightenment Rationalism," in Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, and Andrew Woods, eds., Oxford University Press) (forthcoming)

"Emotion, Neuroscience, and Law: A Comment on Darwin and Greene," Emotion Review, Vol. 3., No. 3, pp. 293-295 (2011) (Special Issue: Emotion and Morality)

"Rawls' Concept of Reflective Equilibrium and its Original Function in 'A Theory of Justice'" 3 Washington University Jurisprudence Review 1 (2010) (Invited Essay)

"Is the Prohibition of Homicide Universal? Evidence from Comparative Criminal Law," 75 Brooklyn Law Review 497 (2009) (Symposium, Is Morality Universal and Should the Law Care?)

"Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: A Formal Model of Unconscious Moral and Legal Knowledge," in B.H. Ross (Series Ed.) & D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making, pp. 27-100, San Diego, CA: Academic Press (2009)

"Dilemmas of Cultural Legality: A Comment on Roger Cotterrell's The Struggle for Law and a Criticism of the House of Lords' Opinions in Begum," International Journal of Law in Context, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 385-393 (2009).

"Unconscious Choices in Legal Analysis" (Comment on Mark Kelman, Interpretive Construction in the Substantive Criminal Law), in P. H. Robinson, S. Garvey, and K Ferzan, eds., Criminal Law Conversations, pp. 220-222, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2009).

"Constraining the Necessity Defense" (Comment on Paul Robinson, Objective versus Subjective Justification), in P. H. Robinson, S. Garvey, and K Ferzan, eds., Criminal Law Conversations, pp. 359-361, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2009).

"Self-Defense Against Wrongful Attack: The Case of the Psychotic Aggressor" (Comment on George Fletcher and Luis Chiesa, Self-Defense and the Case of the Psychotic Aggressor), in P. H. Robinson, S. Garvey, and K Ferzan, eds., Criminal Law Conversations, pp. 374-375, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2009).

"Scottish Common Sense and Nineteenth-Century American Law: A Critical Appraisal" 26 Law and History Review 167 (2008)

"Moral Cognition and Computational Theory," in Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Cambridge: MIT Press) (2008)

"The Poverty of the Moral Stimulus" in Moral Psychology, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Morality: Innateness and Adaptation (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Cambridge: MIT Press) (2008)

"'Plucking the Mask of Mystery from Its Face': Jurisprudence and H.L.A. Hart," (reviewing Nicola Lacey, A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream) 95 Georgetown Law Journal 733 (2007)

"Universal Moral Grammar: Theory, Evidence, and the Future," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 11, No. 4 April 2007, pp. 143-152

"A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications" (with M. Hauser, F. Cushman, L. Young, and R. Kang-Xing Jin), Mind & Language, Vol. 22 No. 1 February 2007, pp. 1-21

"The Free Exercise of Religion: An American Perspective," in Ein neur Kampf der Religionen? Staat, Recht und religiöse Toleranz (M. Mahlmann and H. Rottleuthner, eds., Duncker & Humblot) (2006), pp. 271-288

"Moral Heuristics or Moral Competence? Reflections on Sunstein" 28(4) Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2005), pp. 557-558

"Cognitive Science, Ethics, and Law" (with Matthias Mahlmann) in Epistemology and Ontology (Zenon Bankowski, ed., Franz Steiner Verlag) (2005), pp. 95-102

''Islamic Rationalism and the Foundation of Human Rights,'' in Pluralism and the Law: Proceedings of the 20th IVR World Congress, Volume 3: Global Problems (Arend Soeteman, ed., Franz Steiner Verlag) (2004), pp. 61-70

''The Liberalism of Freedom in the History of Moral Philosophy'' (reviewing John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy) (with Matthias Mahlmann) ARSP (Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie), Band 89/1, 122 (2003), pp. 122-132

''Law, Science, and Morality: A Review of Richard Posner's The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory,'' 54 Stanford Law Review 1057 (2002)

Review of John Rawls, "The Law of Peoples," 36 Stanford Journal of International Law 357 (2000)

''Toward a Universal Moral Grammar" (with Cristina M. Sorrentino and Elizabeth Spelke) in Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Morton A. Gernsbacher and Sharon A. Derry, eds., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) (1998), p. 1250

Unpublished Papers and Working Papers

The Necessary and Proper Clauses (2011)
Workshops: San Diego, Fordham, Stanford

Unreasonable Risk: A Formal Analysis and Critical History of Common Law Negligence (2009)
Workshops: George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota

Aspects of the Theory of Moral Cognition: Investigating Intuitive Knowledge of the Prohibition of Intentional Battery and the Principle of Double Effect (2002)

Aspects of the Theory of Moral Cognition: Investigating Intuitive Knowledge of the Prohibition of Intentional Battery, the Rescue Principle, the First Principle of Practical Reason, and the Principle of Double Effect (Stanford Law School Thesis, May 2002)
Advisors: Tom Grey, Mark Kelman

Outline of a Research Program in Moral Psychology (1997)

The Moral Faculty (1996)

Rawls' Linguistic Analogy (1995)

PhD Dissertation

Rawls' Linguistic Analogy: A Study of the 'Generative Grammar' Model of Moral Theory Described by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (Cornell University, 2000)

Advisors: Noam Chomsky, Richard Miller, Jason Stanley, Allen Wood (chair)