•  12
    Arguments and Stories in Legal Reasoning
    with Gianluca Andresani
    Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 106 (1): 75-90. 2020.
    We argue that legal argumentation, as the subject matter as well as a special subfield of Argumentation Studies, has to be examined by making skilled use of the full panoply of tools such as argumentation and story schemes which are at the forefront of current work in AS. In reviewing the literature, we make explicit our own methodological choices and then illustrate the implications of such an approach through the analysis of a case study in the English law of evidence. We argue that a clear di…Read more
  •  1302
    English Law's Epistemology of Expert Testimony
    Journal of Law and Society 33 (4): 572-595. 2006.
    This article draws upon the epistemology of testimony to analyse recent English case law on expert evidence. It argues that the courts are implicitly committed to an internalist epistemology and an inferentialist view of testimony, and draws a distinction between testimony which is treated as authoritative (where the fact-finder accepts the inferences drawn by the expert without attempting to assess their validity) and that which is treated as merely persuasive.
  •  54
    Two Schools of Legal Idealism: A Positivist Introduction
    Ratio Juris 19 (2): 127-140. 2006.
    This article provides a critical introduction to an issue fo Ratio Juris concerend with two contrasting schools of legal idealism: the so-called Sheffield School (Beyleveld, Brownsword and colleagues) and the “discourse ethics” school of Habermas and Alexy. The article focusses on four issues: (1) whether a "claim to correctness" is a necessary feature of law, (2) the connection between correctness and validity, (3) Alexy's argument for a "qualifying connection" between law and morality, and its…Read more
  •  74
    Expert Testimony, Law and Epistemic Authority
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2): 263-277. 2016.
    This article discusses the concept of epistemic authority in the context of English law relating to expert testimony. It distinguishes between two conceptions of epistemic authority, one strong and one weak, and argues that only the weak conception is appropriate in a legal context, or in any other setting where reliance on experts can be publicly justified. It critically examines Linda Zagzebski's defence of a stronger conception of epistemic authority and questions whether epistemic authority …Read more
  • Law's truth, lay truth and medical science: three case studies
    In Helen Reece (ed.), Law and Science, Oxford University Press. pp. 1--243. 1998.
  •  32
    This is a commentary on the two previous chapters in the same book. It draws on the author's and colleagues' research in Kenya to comment on the other contributors' arguments about the 'right to democratise'. It considers the arguments of an Islamist scholar interviewed in the research for a right to reject democracy, and interprets Kant as rejecting a right of states to impose a republican constitutions on other states. It argues that Kant's position, so interpreted, remains essentially sound.