Werner on The Physics of Law

Swen Werner, My Digital Truth, has published The Physics Of Law. Here is the abstract.

This paper interrogates the structural preconditions of lawful decision-making by showing that law is a symbolic system grounded in logical coherence, semantic stability, and operational consistency. It argues that contemporary legal interpretation increasingly abandons these foundational requirements, leading to a form of institutional dysfunction where law devolves into a belief system. Drawing from Roman legal architecture, computational logic, and legal theory, the paper reframes rights not as normative entitlements but as structurally necessary constraints within a rule-based system. It proposes a non-normative justification for private property as a logical gate enabling coherent legal action among actors with equal rights and no default duties. Through critical analysis of machine adjudication, AI unreliability, and copyright enforcement, it illustrates how legal coherence is undermined when the symbolic form of law is severed from its functional logic. The paper concludes by presenting a framework to restore lawful governance through epistemic clarity and constraint-based reasoning, arguing that legal systems must enforce coherence or collapse into ritualized control. Law is not opinion - it is computation.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Hutchinson on Using Interdisciplinary Methods In Law Reform

Terry Christine M. Hutchinson, Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law, is publishing The Doctrinal Method: Incorporating Interdisciplinary Methods in Reforming the Law in volume 8 of the Erasmus Law Review (2015). Here is the abstract.

The doctrinal methodology is in a period of change and transition. Realising that the scope of the doctrinal method is too constricting, academic lawyers are becoming eclectic in their use of research method. In this transitional time, legal scholars are increasingly infusing evidence (and methods) from other disciplines into their reasoning to bolster their reform recommendations. This article considers three examples of the interplay of the discipline of law with other disciplines in the pursuit of law reform. Firstly the article reviews studies on the extent of methodologies and reformist frameworks in PhD research in Australia. Secondly it analyses a ‘snapshot’ of recently published Australian journal articles on criminal law reform. Thirdly, it focuses on the law reform commissions, those independent government committees that play such an important role in law reform in common law jurisdictions. This examination demonstrates that while the doctrinal core of legal scholarship remains intact, legal scholars are endeavouring to accommodate statistics, comparative perspectives, social science evidence and methods, and theoretical analysis, within the legal research framework, in order to provide additional ballast to the recommendations for reform.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Olson on the Future of Law and Literature (and Other "Law-And") Movements

Greta Olson, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, has published Futures of Law and Literature: A Preliminary Overview from a Culturalist Perspective in Recht und Literatur im Zwischenraum/Law and Literature In-Between: Aktuelle inter- und transdisziplinäre Zugänge/Contemporary Inter- and Transdisciplinary Approaches 37-69 (Christian Hiebaum, Susanne Knaller, and Doris Pichler, eds., Bielefeld, 2015). Here is the abstract.

Two meta-narratives concerning developments in Law and Literature currently prevail. One suggests that the post-1970 movement that was spearheaded by reformist US American legal teachers such as J. B. White, Richard Weisberg, Robin West, and the moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum is no longer viable. Accordingly, the movement is adjudged to be politically and methodologically passé. Further, a discourse is emerging within legal theory that says that since law once housed all of the disciplines currently used to interrogate it, it does not need literature (or anthropology or sociology for that matter) to reflect on its practice. The other narrative says that the historical and geographical moment that marked Law and Literature as US American has been replaced. “Law and Literature” has metamorphosed into a number of different interdisciplinary local and transnational ventures. Accordingly, a polysemic Law and Literature needs to develop a new form of self-reflection about its practice.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.