Research

Directives and Intentions, 33 Nat. Lang. Semantics 255 (2025) (peer-reviewed)

I provide a unified pragmatic account of how expressions of varying grammatical forms (imperatives, modal and non-modal declaratives) can be used to tell people what to do, both directly and indirectly.

An Acceptable Theory of Reasonableness (draft available upon request)

Reasonableness standards in private law (found in negligence, premises liability, and bailments, among others) permit conduct that is merely acceptable. An agent can act reasonably even if they act suboptimally – for example, by taking inefficient precautions, provided the law recognizes a justification for it. In this paper, I show that legal reasonableness conforms to this structure of justified suboptimality across doctrinal areas. This analysis changes how we should read the multifactor balancing tests that run through them: instead of adding to the tally of costs and benefits, factors like emergencies and entrant status do not weigh on the scale, but instead assign a party an entitlement to some imbalance in their favor.

Original Objective Meaning (draft available upon request)

Both textualism and its critics conflate original understandings of meaning with original meaning itself. Drawing on theories of reference, on which meaning is an objective relation between words and the world, the paper poses a dilemma for textualist methodologies: they must choose between fidelity to objective textual meaning and deference to original public understanding. The upshot reaches beyond textualism. Since the meaning of referential terms like “sex” or “monopolize” depends partly on what their referents are actually like, every interpretive methodology must treat some questions about meaning as questions about the world.

The Language of Major Questions (draft available upon request)

This paper asks how well the major questions doctrine in administrative law can work as a linguistic canon consistent with textualism. I argue that the Court’s major questions jurisprudence exploits the context-dependence of specific linguistic forms in the provisions it interprets. The language typically at issue in major questions cases need contextual information to have their complete meaning. But statutory contexts often do not supply enough information to resolve a legal dispute. Filling those blanks requires a theory of how Congress delegates authority, such that the doctrine remains dependant on constitutional non-delegation principles – ultimately combining both linguistic and substantive considerations.

The Law of Favors (in preparation)

Private law models a number of legal relationships on the moral economy of gratuity. An act is gratuitous when one person acts for another’s benefit with no obligation to do so and no right to anything in return. Relationships of this shape carry a risk of subordination at both ends. The benefactor takes charge of part of another person’s interests (however minor), which leaves the beneficiary exposed. But the benefactor also acts unilaterally in service of ends other than their own, which without more undermines their status as an equal (however little). The law mirrors interpersonal morality in its answer to both risks. From gratuitous bailees to promisees to fiduciaries and social hosts, private law demands active consideration for the beneficiary’s interests; and it grants the benefactor a return favor in the form of forbearance, limiting what an ungrateful beneficiary could otherwise ask of them.