This cluster focuses on the cognitive mechanisms that make possible the belief that legal institutions exist and that institutional facts are real, objective facts. In this sense, extending a formula that has proven successful in social ontology, the cluster takes an interdisciplinary approach to “the construction of legal reality”. The cluster also addresses, more broadly, the traditional problem of the nature of law from a cognitive perspective. We look at the cognitive features of human beings which underlie socio-ontological phenomena understood to be relevant for legal institutions—phenomena like collective intentionality, joint commitment, and shared constitutive rules. But we also investigate the peculiarities of law, considering, for example, cognitive-psychological insights about authoritative structures, punishment, and formal validity.
Through this cluster we hope to build a scholarly community around its research team, with a view to forming formal and informal relationships, facilitating collaboration on current and future research projects, and sharing experimental research, relevant literature, and working papers. Regular seminars will be organized around the cluster.
If you are working on problems of legal ontology from an interdisciplinary perspective and are interested in joining the cluster, you can do so by writing to us at Michele Ubertone [m.ubertone@unibo.it] or Corrado Roversi [corrado.roversi@unibo.it].