Edith Beerdsen
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edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Edith Beerdsen
@edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
5.5K followers 920 following 140 posts
Associate Professor at Temple Law School in Philadephia. Scientific Evidence, Civ Pro, litigation culture. She/zij/היא. https://ssrn.com/author=2745040
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edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
This paper came from a fascination with how lawyers try to game the system in litigation and how judges sometimes accept it and sometimes do not. This paper examines the concept of gamesmanship and how courts use it to shape litigants' strategic maneuvering room.
February 9, 2026 at 7:07 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
NOT a recent acceptance but last Feb's paper now on SSRN, w/ many thanks to the excellent editors at Georgia L. Rev. Full paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

(Newer paper still in the cycle & on a very different topic! Sci. ev., skeptics, democracy. On SSRN soon, but lmk if you want to read.)
In civil litigation, strategy is everywhere. Some of it is explicitly envisioned by rules of procedure, but other forms of strategy rely more on clever exploitation of gaps in the rules, sometimes through trickery, surprise, or psychological mind games. The role strategy plays in civil litigation is underexamined, which raises two concerns: first, this lack of attention entrenches strategy by default as a procedural value in competition with accuracy, efficiency, and other procedural values. Second, it amplifies the disadvantages experienced by unrepresented litigants. This Article builds on earlier work to examine how courts shape the space that litigants have for strategic behavior, in service of an inquiry into how that space ought to be shaped. Battles over the meaning and rightful place of strategy in civil litigation tend to play out in the arena of “gamesmanship,” a term courts use with increasing frequency to refer to behavior in the gray zone between the clearly allowed and the clearly disallowed. Strategic behavior in this realm is often unregulated by rules, only weakly governed by norms, and subject to significant judicial discretion. Judicial decisions in cases involving gamesmanship frequently expose tensions between respect for zealous advocacy and concerns about fairness and accuracy. This Article makes two contributions to our understanding of the role of strategic behavior in civil litigation. First, it examines the meaning of “gamesmanship” in a litigation context and proposes a categorization of gamesmanlike litigation behavior. Second, it applies this categorization in describing how courts use the term “gamesmanship” and surveys and theorizes how they treat behavior they have thus labeled. I argue that the concept functions as three distinct analytical tools: (1) as an aspect of purposive statutory analysis; (2) as a canon of construction; and (3) as an implied mental-state element. The Article concludes by imagining a different approach.
February 9, 2026 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
itayravid.bsky.social
Another new article of mine is officially out: “(Re)Individualizing Criminal Law,” (67 B.C L. Rev. 255 (2026): lnkd.in/eR9eF7Fv Abstract 👇 & v. short 🧵
1/6
February 3, 2026 at 8:52 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Nobody asked for this!
February 2, 2026 at 5:57 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Thermophilic bacterium at the bottom of a smoldering compost heap.
February 1, 2026 at 11:36 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
How manipulative is this? If you turn off gmail's AI summaries (that nobody asked for), no autocorrect for you.
Screenshot of gmail settings for autocorrect: "Turn on smart features and personalization in Gmail, Chat, and Meet to use autocorrect"
February 1, 2026 at 11:02 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
If you had learned, you might still not have been aware of dakhaas. It's not very common slang. I associate it mostly with Utrecht dialect (where you can call someone an achterlijke dakhaas = retarded roof hare), but it may well be used elsewhere, too; not sure.
February 1, 2026 at 8:25 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
You may already know this, but in case not: "roof rabbit" (or rather "roof hare," dakhaas) is in fact Dutch slang for cat.
February 1, 2026 at 7:49 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
In case you're wondering why I know nothing about anything. (History, philosophy, etc.)
January 31, 2026 at 12:30 AM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Statistical Thermodynamics
Structure and Reactivity I and II
Molecular Simulations
Advanced Group Theory
Quantum Mechanics
anthonymkreis.bsky.social Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 10d
Nevermind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

American Revolutionary History (Don Higginbotham)

History of the Antebellum South (Harry Watson)

The American South (Marci Cohen Harris)

Judicial Politics (Joe Ura)

Presidential Decisionmaking (Tim McKeown)

Absolute legends.
dandrezner.bsky.social Daniel Drezner @dandrezner.bsky.social · 10d
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Sage, the Way, and Zen
Shakespeare
Religion and Modern Secularism
Creative Fiction Writing
International Political Economy

Pleasantly surprised how many of these classes proved useful later in life.
January 31, 2026 at 12:26 AM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
An amicus curiae in the US legal system is not appointed by a court (unlike in NL). It's just a nonparty who decides to submit a brief in an existing case.
January 28, 2026 at 12:32 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
The most hopeful research I've come across recently, on this point. Bottom line: everyone has a tipping point.
Article abstract for "The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever “Get It”?" by David P. Redlawsk et al. Abstract: In order to update candidate evaluations voters must acquire information and determine whether that new information supports or opposes their candidate expectations. Normatively, new negative information about a preferred candidate should result in a downward adjustment of an existing evaluation. However, recent studies show exactly the opposite; voters become more supportive of a preferred candidate in the face of negatively valenced information. Motivated reasoning is advanced as the explanation, arguing that people are psychologically motivated to maintain and support existing evaluations. Yet it seems unlikely that voters do this ad infinitum. To do so would suggest continued motivated reasoning even in the face of extensive disconfirming information. In this study we consider whether motivated reasoning processes can be overcome simply by continuing to encounter information incongruent with expectations. If so, voters must reach a tipping point after which they begin more accurately updating their evaluations. We show experimental evidence that such an affective tipping point does in fact exist. We also show that as this tipping point is reached, anxiety increases, suggesting that the mechanism that generates the tipping point and leads to more accurate updating may be related to the theory of affective intelligence. The existence of a tipping point suggests that voters are not immune to disconfirming information after all, even when initially acting as motivated reasoners.
January 24, 2026 at 10:22 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
eburch.bsky.social
First signed copies of THE PAIN BROKERS at @barnesandnoble.com Athens! This story that I've held close since 2021 is in your hands now and out everywhere JAN 13.

It feels a little tender & terrifying to share it with the world. I hope that you fall in love with the people in it as I have. ❤️
January 10, 2026 at 8:17 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
@nateela.bsky.social
December 26, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
tommybennett.com
Do you want to see the new filings at the Supreme Court each day? I built a tool to do just that. s2.smu.edu/~tbbennett/d...
December 11, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
kevintobia.bsky.social
This is a fascinating new experimental jurisprudence paper from Chris Jaeger on what is "reasonable."

For laypeople's judgments of reasonableness, the probability of harm (P) has an important effect beyond its role in the B
yalelawjournal.org/article/the-...
The Hand Formula’s Unequal Inputs | Yale Law Journal
Tort law’s famous Hand Formula does not align with how laypeople judge whether conduct is reasonable. Five original experiments demonstrate that the Hand...
yalelawjournal.org
December 5, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
elliemargolis.bsky.social
I wrote a whole article about this problem with @leecarpenter.bsky.social!

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
What Law Schools Teach When They Don’t Teach About State Constitutions
State constitutional law has always been an essential component of federalism and a key to understanding the fabric of American law. It is even more important t
papers.ssrn.com
December 3, 2025 at 8:52 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
It just was. Thank you. (And I did reach out by message to Support, twice, before posting here.)
December 4, 2025 at 12:37 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Today they responded to my most recent msg. A boilerplate email linking the FAQ, which says: "Most submissions are posted within 3 business days [...] If you have not heard from us within 10 business days, please contact the Support Team."

Yeah, I did. And the Support Team sent me to the FAQ.
December 3, 2025 at 11:24 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
What are people's recent experiences with SSRN processing timelines? I have had a piece in the queue for 35 days now, and I've reached out twice. Rote response and still queued.
@ssrn.bsky.social
December 3, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
cmorten.bsky.social
🚨New article! "The Second Patent Bargain"!🚨
In it, I argue U.S. law can & should use patent term extension—an obscure but important provision & process—to unlock late-stage, detailed evidence of the safety & effectiveness of drugs, vaccines & other FDA-regulated products.
1/
🧵
December 1, 2025 at 7:42 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
I refuse to accept this. But also, I’m waiting for someone to write up the psychological theory of why new books somehow always seem to jump the queue. (And then get jumped in turn by newer new books.)
November 26, 2025 at 5:55 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Worth reading in its entirety, on “healthy frictions.”
us.theconversation.com The Conversation U.S. @us.theconversation.com · Nov 21
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 2:13 PM
edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
Intriguing new metric. Very curious to see future work on how it correlates with replicability, spin, etc.
lakens.bsky.social Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · Oct 31
New paper finds that selective reporting remains the most replicable finding in science: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... I especially like their new exploratory metric 'p-values per participant'. Some papers had 11 p-values per participant! 🤯
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
October 31, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
dsimson-law.bsky.social
I just posted the current version of my most recent Article, "Conceptual Gerrymandering and the Weaponization of SFFA" to @ssrn.bsky.social. Abstract and TOC are attached below. Comments and (good faith) critiques very much welcome and appreciated. 🧵 1/
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
October 3, 2025 at 6:21 PM