Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

Hannikainen, Ivar R; Tobia, Kevin P; de Almeida, Guilherme da F C F; Struchiner, N; Kneer, Markus; Bystranowski, P; Dranseika, V; Strohmaier, N; Bensinger, S; Dolinina, K; Janik, B; Lauraityte, Egle; Laakasuo, M; Liefgreen, A; Neiders, I; Prochnicki, M; Rosas, A; Sundvall, J; Zuradzki, Tomasz

doi:10.1073/pnas.2206531119

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Hannikainen, I. R., Tobia, K. P., de Almeida, G. da F. C. F., Struchiner, N., Kneer, M., Bystranowski, P., Dranseika, V., Strohmaier, N., Bensinger, S., Dolinina, K., Janik, B., Lauraityte, E., Laakasuo, M., Liefgreen, A., Neiders, I., Prochnicki, M., Rosas, A., Sundvall, J., & Zuradzki, T. (2022). Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(44), e2206531119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119

Abstract

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of t