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11 - Rules

from Part II - Introductions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2025

By
Guilherme da Franca Couto Fernandes de Almeida ,
Noel Struchiner  and
Ivar Hannikainen
Edited by
Kevin Tobia
Kevin Tobia
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Rules are ubiquitous. They figure prominently in all kinds of practical reasoning. Rules are especially important in jurisprudence, occupying a central role in answers to the question of “what is law?” In this chapter, we start by reviewing the evidence showing that both textual and extratextual elements exert influence over rule violation judgments (Section II). Most studies about rules contrast text with an extratextual element identified as the “purpose” or “spirit” of the rule. But what counts as the purpose or the spirit of a rule? Is it the goal intended by the rule maker? Or is purpose necessarily moral? Section III reviews the results of experiments designed to answer these questions. These studies show that the extratextual element that’s relevant for the folk concept of rule is moral in nature. Section IV turns to the different explanations that have been entertained in the literature for the pattern of results described in Sections II and III. Finally, in Section V we discuss some other extratextual elements that have been investigated in the literature. We conclude with a brief discussion of future directions.

Keywords

rulestextpurpose
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence , pp. 173 - 184
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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