Evolutionary theory and legal adjudication: Substrata for a predictive theory of legal science

Evolutionary theory and philosophical naturalism have shaken the foundations of mainstream legal thinking, rooted deep in cartesian dualism and the sharp division between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften. We contend that a ‘global’ philosophical shift has ‘local’ consequences in legal thinking. Departing from a Darwinian concept of biological evolution and a non-cognitive account of legal adjudication, we proceed to draw from Ross’s legal realism (naturalized) and Quinean empiricism, both faithful to the predictive purposes of science. Upon criticizing anthropologically spare models of adjudication, we purport to demonstrate that evolutionary biology and psychology can usefully enrich the array of facts on which predictions of adjudications can be made and subsequently verified. This enables the formulation of ‘law-like’ norm-descriptive statements based upon legal data and the permanent conditions (‘P-conditions’) of the adjudicators. We conclude that while anthropologically rich theoretical models of adjudication and empirical science are both required, there is still room for armchair conceptual analysis.