Publications

9 … Is Every Law for Everyone? Assessing Access to National Legislation through Official Legal Databases around the World
43 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 298–321 (2023), jointly with Andreas Pacher … DOI: 10.1093/ojls/gqac032

8 … Sharing the Recipe. Reproducibility and Replicability in Research Across Disciplines
8 Research Ideas and Outcomes 1–20 (e89980/2022), jointly with Rima-Maria Rahal, Hilmar Brohmer, Florian Pethig … DOI: 10.3897/rio.8.e89980

7 … Unsichtbare Hermeneutiken. Die schwierige Wahlverwandtschaft von Rechts- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften
13 Rechtswissenschaft. Zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung 299–317 (2022) … DOI: 10.5771/1868-8098-2022-2-299

6 … On getting it right by being wrong. A case study of how flawed research may become self-fulfilling at last
119 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1–4 (e2122274119/2022) … DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122274119

5 … Group Identity in Intermediated Interactions. Lessons from a Trust Game with Delegation in South Africa
in Experimental Economics and Culture 227–264 (Gunnthorsdottir/Norton ed., 2018), jointly with Nicky Nicholls … DOI: 10.1108/S0193-230620180000020008

4 … Freier Zugang zur juristischen Fachliteratur im Spiegel der Open-Science-Bewegung. Reflexionen zur Tagung «Open Access in den Rechtswissenschaften» vom 27. Mai 2016 an der Universität Bern
3 sui-generis.ch - Die juristische Open-Access-Zeitschrift 96–104 (2016) … DOI: 10.21257/sg.28

3 … The Hog Cycle of Law Professors. An Econometric Time Series Analysis of the Entry-level Job Market in Legal Academia
11 PLoS ONE 1–22 (e0159815 & e0168041/2016), jointly with Christoph Engel … DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159815

2 … Mauerfall in den Wissenschaften. Tagung “OpenCon 2015 – Empowering the Next Generation to Advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data” vom 14. bis 16. November 2015 in Brüssel
7 Rechtswissenschaft. Zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung 318–326 (2016) … DOI: 10.5771/1868-8098-2016-2-318

1 … Der „Sprachgebrauch“ im Waffenarsenal der Jurisprudenz. Die Rechtspraxis im Spiegel der quantitativ-empirischen Sprachforschung
in Zugänge zur Rechtssemantik. Interdisziplinäre Ansätze im Zeitalter neuer Medien 184–204 (Vogel ed., 2015) … DOI: 10.1515/9783110348941-009 How does the Law speak about Language? Legal theorists currently considers the “plain meaning” or “ordinary usage” as the key to interpreting legal texts. Yet they clarify neither what they mean by language “usage” nor which purpose they attribut to it or how they determine usage in the first place. To answer these questions with a quantitatively reliable assessment, the present study examines all federal laws of Germany and the 9.000 most important German court cases of the last ten years to analyse how these legal texts use “language usage”. Results show that they use it to denote two categorically different phenomena: terms and definitions as set by lawmakers, on the one hand, and communication as practiced by rule addressees on the other. Courts use the latter especially to determine word meanings, sourcing it directly from dictionaries and their own language comprehension. The present article criticizes this approach and discusses methods to base “language usage” on solid empirical research, thus preventing its deterioration into a substantially meaningless appeal to authority.