Stefan Magen

What should judges do when faced with immoral laws? Should they apply them without exception, since “the law is the law?” Or can exceptions be made for grossly immoral laws, such as historically, Nazi law? Surveying laypeople (N = 167) and people with some legal training (N = 141) on these matters, we find a surprisingly strong, monotonic relationship between people's subjective moral evaluation of laws and their judgments that these laws should be applied in concrete cases. This tendency is most pronounced among individuals who endorse natural law (i.e., the legal-philosophical view that immoral laws are not valid laws at all), and is attenuated when disagreement about the moral status of a law is considered reasonable. The relationship is equally strong for laypeople and for those with legal training. We situate our findings within the broader context of morality's influence on legal reasoning that experimental jurisprudence has uncovered in recent years, and consider normative implications.

Only recently have philosophers and psychologists begun to consider empirical research methods to inform questions and debates in legal philosophy. With the field ripe for further experimental inquiry, this collection explores the most topical empirical developments and anticipates future research directions. Bringing together legal scholars, psychologists and philosophers, chapters address questions such as: Do people share a stable set of intuitions about what the law is? What are common perceptions about causation, intentionality, culpability, and are they consistent with the corresponding technical legal concepts? To what extent can experimental research methods advance theoretical debates in legal philosophy about the nature of law? With fascinating implications for legal philosophy, ethics and moral psychology, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Law sets the agenda for the emerging field of experimental jurisprudence and will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners alike.