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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

Our study suggests a different lesson of Nix: Law reflects a mixture of ordinary and technical terms, and statutes regularly speak to multiple lay and expert audiences.

Nix is cited for "ordinary" and context-sensitive meaning. But sometimes the right context-sensitive meaning is a technical one!

Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

Today Supreme Court Justices invoke Nix to support "ordinary" meaning in legal interpretation.

They cite Nix as the remedy to "literalism" in interpretation: Interpretation should be context-sensitive and ordinary.

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

Moving into the 20th century, trade usages of "tomato" also became more ambiguous.

As we became more familiar with tomatoes, it was less common for texts to label them explicitly as "fruits" or "vegetables"

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

Drilling down further, even "trade" usage varies. When comparing texts for (i) scientific, (ii), agricultural, and (iii) commercial audiences, there were more "vegetable" uses of "tomato" in the last.

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

A sample of ordinary language supports the Court: tomato was used largely as a vegetable.

But in a sample of language from specialized trade contexts, "tomato" was used often as a fruit and vegetable.

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

The Court held that a tomato is a vegetable (in the 1883 Tariff Act), elevating ordinary over scientific meaning.

But it hinted that it would follow a trade meaning – if one existed. We studied 19th century trade texts, which suggest a new lesson of Nix...

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 1d

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

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Brandon Tensley @brandontensley.bsky.social · 2d

"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

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Reposted by Kevin Tobia

Nick Byrd, Ph.D. @byrdnick.com · 16d

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)."

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 22d

(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."

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Izabela Skoczeń @izaskoczen.bsky.social · 22d

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!

Julieta Rabanos @jrabanos.bsky.social · 22d

Ep. #10 of Heavily Accented Philosophy of Law Podcast is here!

In this episode, we delve with Iza Skoczeń (@izaskoczen.bsky.social - Jagiellonian Centre for Law, Language and Philosophy) into the topic of experimental jurisprudence.

Listen to it here 👇
creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

Episode 10 - Experimental Jurisprudence (ft. Izabela Skoczeń) by Heavily Accented Philosophy of Law

In this episode, we delve into the debate about experimental jurisprudence (also known as xJur). What is exactly “experimental jurisprudence”? What is in turn “experimental philosophy”? What are the m...

creators.spotify.com

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 22d

(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."

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Brian D. Earp, PhD @briandavidearp.bsky.social · Aug 29

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/

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · Aug 5

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

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Christian Mott @cjmott.bsky.social · Aug 5

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

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Dallas Card @dallascard.bsky.social · Jul 29

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....

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Richard M Re @richardre.bsky.social · Jul 23

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

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Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · Jul 23

Must read. This is criminal conduct, full stop.

Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · Jul 23

wapo.st/3GZuXCW
gift link

U.S. deportees, freed from Salvadoran prison, describe ‘horror movie’

Three Venezuelans, released last week from the Terrorism Confinement Center, said they were repeatedly beaten and denied access to lawyers.

wapo.st

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Tom Dannenbaum @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social · Jul 22

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.

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · Jul 21

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

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Kat O’Brien @lavidagata.bsky.social · Jul 19

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

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Brandon Waldon @bwal.bsky.social · Jul 14

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

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Prof Caroline Mala Corbin @carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social · Jul 3

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

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Senator Ron Wyden @wyden.senate.gov · Jun 27

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.

Jen Bendery @jbendery.bsky.social · Jun 27

NEW: The provision in the GOP tax bill that makes it easier to get gun silencers, rifles and shotguns violates Senate rules and has to come out, says the Senate rules ref www.huffpost.com/entry/gun-si...

Gun Silencer Provision In GOP Tax Bill Violates Rules, Says Senate Rules Ref

The parliamentarian ruled that the provision making it easier to get silencers, rifles and shotguns is irrelevant to the budget bill and has to come out.

www.huffpost.com

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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · Jun 26

thanks Danny!

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