Kevin Tobia
LightNews LightNews
kevintobia.bsky.social
Kevin Tobia
@kevintobia.bsky.social
8.3K followers 480 following 17 posts
Law Professor at Georgetown. Legal interpretation, Supreme Court, philosophy, experimental jurisprudence, law & tech

Bio: https://bit.ly/4hQXQil | Papers: https://bit.ly/3OkT2nH 🏳️‍🌈
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
joshchafetz.bsky.social
I've posted a (lightly) revised version of The Chadha Presidency, which takes account of recent tariff disapproval votes and a few other new developments. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The <i>Chadha </i>Presidency
Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the answer to th
papers.ssrn.com
October 31, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
stevevladeck.bsky.social
There's a longstanding debate over the value of law professor amicus briefs at #SCOTUS.

I'll just note that the additional briefing the Court ordered today in the Illinois National Guard case was in direct response to an amicus brief filed by ... a law professor (@martylederman.bsky.social).
October 30, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
ias-research.bsky.social
🚨🗣️ The talk given by Ivar R. Hannikainen at the IAS Seminar is now available to view on our YouTube channel. Please click on the link below to access the video

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐚𝐰
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7va...
Ivar R. Hannikainen - Morality, coordination and law
YouTube video by IAS Research
www.youtube.com
October 10, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
chazfirestone.bsky.social
This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
Screenshot of a paper abstract: “Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
kevintobia.bsky.social
In Nix v. Hedden (1893), the Supreme Court held that a tomato is a vegetable. But there's more to the story... 🍅🧵

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Nix v. Hedden
In the study of American statutory interpretation, Nix v. Hedden (1893) exemplifies the primacy of ordinary meaning. The Court famously held that, in a tariff a
papers.ssrn.com
October 7, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
brandontensley.bsky.social
"People really forget that we're human beings."

I wrote about the deep challenges facing Black transgender youth and their families and the support network some are creating to help others navigate a moment of heightened political hostility. capitalbnews.org/black-parent...
No One Was Helping Black Transgender Youth. So These Parents Stepped In.
A new nonprofit provides resources to Black families of transgender and nonbinary youth at a moment of heightened political hostility.
capitalbnews.org
October 6, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
byrdnick.com
Might the concept of "good judgment" vary by framing or social roles?

Five studies of four nations (🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇨🇳) found some words and roles were more associated with "rational" than "reasonable" (and vice versa).

doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

#CogSci #xPhi #linguistics #dataViz
Descriptive statistics about the samples "Figure 1. Top ten most frequent co-occurrence of Adjectives with ‘rational’ (blue) and ‘reasonable’ (orange) when asked to describe most important characteristics of a person showing sound judgment (Study 1a) / good judgment in a challenging situation (Study 1b). Adjectives are ordered from those most associated with ‘rational’ to those with ‘reasonable.’ Dumbbell nodes represent the percentage of each adjective’s co-occurrence relative to the sum of independent occurrences of each pair of terms." "Figure 2. Qualities attributed to rational and reasonable persons in Study 1. Color-coded adjectives reflect Analytical, Moral, and Inner Fortitude items (Study 1a)/Agency and Communion factors (Study 1b). Top panels: Estimates from linear mixed model with responses to all characteristics nested in participants, with target order (rational vs. reasonable) as a covariate and false discovery rate correction for multiple testing. Dashed vertical line delineates effects 1 unit above midpoint of the 1–7 scale in Study 1a / half a unit above the midpoint of the 1–5 scale in Study 1b. Bottom panels: Pearson’s correlations and 95% CIs of average scores across items making up each factor. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05." "Figure 3. Top Panel: Preference proportions for reasonable vs. rational agents in social roles. Displays proportions (with 95% CI) derived from logits in generalized mixed models. The dashed line at .50 indicates parity; above this, preference leans towards reasonable agents, and below, towards rational agents. Bottom Panel: Necessity ratings for rationality and reasonableness by role (1–5 rating scale). Shows estimated means and 95% CI. Ratings indicate moderate to high necessity (3–4) for both rationality and reasonableness across rule-based (on the right) and holistic roles (on the left)."
September 22, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
kevintobia.bsky.social
(Last) Call for Papers: "New Voices in Legislation", 2026 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans (Jan. 7, 4pm).

Junior scholars will workshop drafts in groups, led by a senior commenter. Please send drafts to [email protected] by Sep. 19, 2025 with the subject "AALS New Voices Submission."
September 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
izaskoczen.bsky.social
The fabulous @jrabanos.bsky.social and @BojanSpaic discussed experimental jurisprudence with me in their awesome podcast! If you want to know why experimental jurisprudence is not like theoretical physics, or what does lying and reasonableness have in common, check it out!
September 16, 2025 at 7:53 AM
kevintobia.bsky.social
(Last) Call for Papers: "New Voices in Legislation", 2026 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans (Jan. 7, 4pm).

Junior scholars will workshop drafts in groups, led by a senior commenter. Please send drafts to [email protected] by Sep. 19, 2025 with the subject "AALS New Voices Submission."
September 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
briandavidearp.bsky.social
Final call for global collaborators on this replication collaboration on @bioxphi studies — moral psychologists and x-phi researchers wanted! especially based in SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! global-bioXphi | moral science lab www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/
August 29, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
joshchafetz.bsky.social
The final version of my "Corruption and the Supreme Court" has been published in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and is available for download here: ssrn.com/abstract=497...
Corruption and the Supreme Court
Corruption is everywhere at the Supreme Court. The justices routinely rule on what is—and, more frequently, what is not—corrupt. Simultaneously, their off-the-b
ssrn.com
August 5, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
cjmott.bsky.social
After many years of anticipation (mainly by me), @drlarisa.bsky.social and I have a paper on the way people understand two mental state terms used in the criminal law -- "knowingly" and "recklessly" -- forthcoming in JEP:Applied. 1/
christianmott.com
August 5, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
dallascard.bsky.social
I am delighted to share our new #PNAS paper, with @grvkamath.bsky.social @msonderegger.bsky.social and @sivareddyg.bsky.social, on whether age matters for the adoption of new meanings. That is, as words change meaning, does the rate of adoption vary across generations? www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
July 29, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
richardre.bsky.social
Last fall, the editors of the Harvard Law Review invited me to write the Foreword for this year's Supreme Court issue.

My working draft is below, and comments are most welcome.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Foreword: To A Conservative Warren Court
Ideological conflict has masked an underlying continuity in the American legal system. In recent years, the Supreme Court -- while obviously subject to fierce c
papers.ssrn.com
July 23, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
jamalgreene.bsky.social
Must read. This is criminal conduct, full stop.
July 23, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
tomdannenbaum.bsky.social
Do not look away.
hearing the same story from all the patients I've treated and operated on. Their families, and indeed medical and nursing colleagues of mine in Gaza who have been to these food distribution points to get food for themselves. And the story is the same from all of them - they're being shot by Israeli soldiers or by quadcopters which are the remote drones being controlled by the Israelis and they're been shot in multiple different body parts. And there seems to be a clustering of different body parts on particular days. So one day, they're coming in having been shot in the abdomen. Another day they're coming in having being shot in the head or the neck. Last Saturday we had four young teenage males, all who came in at the same time, having been shots in the testicles. So there's a very clear pattern and it's almost as if a game is being played that today it's gonna be the head, tomorrow it's going to be the abdomen and these injuries are devastating. I had a 12-year-old boy die on the operating table the other day from a bullet. He'd been shot by an Israeli soldier at a food distribution point and had been shot through the aorta. So appalling injuries the like of which I would never have imagined could have happened if I were not seeing this with my own eyes. it's terrible, the malnutrition. This is my third trip to Gaza. I've called this out on both my previous trips, but it's much worse now. And I've seen it in many of the adult patients I've been operating on. They're coming in malnourished, so their ability for their tissues to heal is severely impaired. And we're operating on sometimes very major injuries, but injuries which they'd have a very, very high chance of surviving with appropriate surgery if they were not malnourished. And of course, we've got no nutritional support to give them in hospitals. On the paediatric and tend to care unit, the lack of feed is dire. On the neonatal, I mean, they've been four premature babies who've died in recent weeks, purely because of malnutrition. Their mothers were too malnourished to breastfeed them and there was no formula feed to give them. And formula feed is being denied, they're not getting any formula feed in. Some of my American medical colleagues had brought formula feed into Gaza but it was all confiscated at the border. The malnutrition I'm seeing is terrible and children and adults are dying as a result of it.
July 22, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
joshchafetz.bsky.social
I just posted a new paper on @ssrn.bsky.social, titled "The Chadha Presidency". Here's the link, and I'll post the abstract in the next post. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The <i>Chadha </i>Presidency
<p><span>Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the ans
papers.ssrn.com
July 21, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
lavidagata.bsky.social
There’s so much interesting data in this latest by @adambonica.bsky.social on data and democracy. Highlights (or lowlights) to me include Supreme Court acting virtually opposite the lower courts, the U.S. being the biggest gerontocracy & low Dem turnout in 2024.
open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...
On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward
A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.
open.substack.com
July 19, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
bwal.bsky.social
Currently accepting applications on a rolling basis! Postdoc in Empirical Approaches to Legal Interpretation, with a start date of Fall 2025. A great opportunity to work with the wonderful @complingy.bsky.social @kevintobia.bsky.social

Details here: apply.interfolio.com/170055
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
July 14, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social
What I Heard on a Suicide Hotline for Trans Kids

"That more calls came from rural red than from urban blue states was not a mere gut feeling...Published data by the Trevor Project links the dozens of recent anti-trans laws w/ increases in the rates of suicide attempts by trans & nonbinary youth"
Opinion | What I Heard on a Suicide Hotline for Trans Kids
What the Trump administration fails to understand is that callers are desperately searching for just one trusted adult.
www.nytimes.com
July 3, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Kevin Tobia
wyden.senate.gov
Two more overnight wins: my team successfully removed a scheme from the Republican bill to end background checks and registrations for easily-concealed guns and silencers. There’s no limit to the awful stuff they crammed into this bill.
June 27, 2025 at 1:33 PM
kevintobia.bsky.social
Imagine a friend experienced a dramatic deterioration, becoming cruel and selfish. You might say this is not even the "same person."

But studies find that when judging dramatic improvements, people more often say the person is still the same.

A new paper finds this same asymmetry across cultures!
June 26, 2025 at 12:38 PM