Law is interpreted and implemented by many hands. Some of them belong to judges, legislators, or lawyers—but many belong to nurses, teachers, municipal officials, or department heads: professionals who encounter law not in courtrooms or casebooks, but in institutional documents, contracts, checklists, and internal protocols. These actors do not interpret law as legal theorists or as abstract "laypeople," but as role-bound individuals embedded in specific organizational contexts. Their understanding of legal norms is shaped by institutional incentives, bureaucratic hierarchies, resource constraints, inherited routines, and pressures to defer to internal authorities. They are interpreters, but also implementers—conduits through which law acquires practical meaning.

While experimental jurisprudence has deepened our understanding of how legal concepts like causation, intention, or rights are grasped by legal experts and ordinary citizens, it has rarely focused on this middle terrain: how individuals interpret legal rules as part of their job, within the constraints and affordances of organizational life.

This conference provides a space in which to get together, think and talk about this middle terrain. The talk abstracts will be made available shortly. But given that the speakers come from cognitive science, economics, law, philosophy, and sociology, the discussions and explorations at this event are sure to be a lot of fun, and of great interest.

REGISTRATION

If you're in the area, and plan to attend in person could you let us know here? (so we can make sure there's enough coffee and snacks for all): https://forms.office.com/e/Ywr8eKZU5Y
If you're not in the area, but you'd like to join us remotely, then could you let us know here?: https://forms.office.com/e/ZzcTRv7brb

SPEAKERS

Alex Davies (Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu)
Emmi Kaaya (Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu)
Ivar R. Hannikainen (Department of Philosophy I, University of Granada)
Mario Armando Sandoval Islas (Department of Law, University of Genoa)
Salima Issina-Shorman (Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University)
Katarina Kovacevic (Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University)
Jekaterina Nikitina (Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations, University of Milan)
Elena Pedroni (Faculté des Lettres, UFR de Philosophie Sorbonne, Sorbonne University)
Karolina Prochownik (Center for Law, Behavior, and Cognition, Ruhr University Bochum)
Kati Rantala (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki)
Izabela Skoczeń (Law Faculty, Jagiellonian University)
Johanna Vanto (Faculty of Law, University of Turku)
Michał Wieczorkowski (Faculty of Law and Administration, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań)
Alexander Wulf (Centre for Social Legal Studies, University of Oxford / SRH University of Applied Sciences Heidelberg, Campus Berlin)