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Edith Beerdsen

@edithbeerdsen.bsky.social
5.6K followers 998 following 174 posts

Associate Professor at Temple Law School in Philadephia. Scientific Evidence, Civ Pro, litigation culture. She/zij/היא. ssrn.com/author=2745040

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Reposted by Edith Beerdsen
David A. Simon @davidasimon.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
I hosted a conference for a couple years that focused on Junior Scholars. I had to take a hiatus but wonder if people are still interested in doing this again. I am hopeful next spring--but too soon to tell.
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Newly added to SSRN - with glitches galore, so apologies if you‘ve already received this through multiple SSRN distribution lists! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Expert Evidence in Times of Skepticism and Distrust
125 Michigan L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2027)

63 Pages Posted: 30 May 2026 Last revised: 31 May 2026
Edith Beerdsen
Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law

Date Written: May 19, 2026

Abstract
Trust in science and scientists is faltering. Additionally, trust in judges as neutral arbiters is at an all-time low. In court, the backdrop of science skepticism, denialism, and distrust is exposing that the frameworks that govern the admissibility of expert evidence are ill-suited to the task of evaluating and applying scientific knowledge for the resolution of civil disputes in a manner that honors accuracy and democratic legitimacy. 

Drawing from recent literature from the philosophy of science and theories of deliberative democracy, this Article argues that our existing evidentiary frameworks are based on outdated and incomplete conceptions of the nature of authority and objectivity and a poor fit for resolving issues involving contested science. They misallocate responsibilities between experts, judges, and jurors, misconceiving these actors’ proper roles. They thereby risk a further alienation of those who have already lost their trust in science and the judiciary and, crucially, deprive the jury of the chance to fulfill its rightful epistemic function.

This Article calls for altering both how scientific information is admitted into evidence and how juries interact with it. Skeptical attitudes suggest that we should leave more to the jury, not less. By involving the jury in decisions of admissibility and permitting more active engagement with expert evidence, open-minded consideration of information by a critical audience may be possible. Juror participation is not only a matter of legitimacy and procedure; it is also of epistemic importance. 

Keywords: Scientific Evidence, Evidence, Expertise, Objectivity, Deliberative Democracy, Civil Procedure, Civil Litigation
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
THE best conference. Such a good time. (And it's now so big that it's no longer possible to talk to everyone. What a challenge - this flew by!)
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Martha 🍭 @marthabawn.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Science happiness is the best happiness
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
A new set of papers, sharing the long-awaited result of several reproducibility and replicability projects, including commentaries, is published today. I look forward to reading the studies, and re-using the data generated! www.nature.com/collections/...
nature.com
Reliable research in the social and behavioural and sciences
Sweeping new investigations probe the replication, robustness and reproducibility of results across the behavioural and social sciences.
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Doron Dorfman @dorfmandoron.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
It was a pleasure to have @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social present her timely and important article, Expert Evidence in Times of Skepticism & Distrust (forthcoming @michlawreview.bsky.social), at today’s @setonhalllaw.bsky.social faculty workshop, sparking an invigorating discussion 🔥🔥🔥
A woman on a podium amid speech in front of an audience of men and women
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
This is not just a win, and not even just a win that will improve many people's lives. It is also proof of concept of a form of scholarship that Rachel pioneered. (Make sure to read the whole thread.)
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Why is coming up with an idea and having an AI work it into a full article better than publishing the idea only? That way every reader can decide for himself whether to read the idea as is or to prompt an AI for a blog version, podcast version, law-review version, essay version, ELI5 version, etc.
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Alex Klein @alexklein.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
I am thrilled that my latest article, The Dirty Work of Executioners is forthcoming in the UC Irvine Law Review! The acknowledgment footnote here is long—so many people encouraged and inspired me, and asked me hard questions that made my work better. Draft coming soon to SSRN…
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
very aspect of life in this country is designed so that people do not form bonds or relationships with other people, it's wild to watch in action. Never seen divide and conquer applied this rigorously to a domestic population that is not under foreign occupation
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Nila Bala @nilabala.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Happy to share that Developmental Evidence Rules is forthcoming in the California Law Review! What would it mean to take childhood seriously in evidence law? This article takes up that question.
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Rachel Lopez @rlopez.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Working on Restoring Justice kept me grounded this past year, so I share it w/ excitement & some nervousness. Written w/ Meredith Elizalde, whose son Nick was killed in a shooting at his high school, we argue for a right to restorative justice. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
First time presenting this work to a room of scientists. General reaction to learning about how science is evaluated for use in court: 🤯
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
This was a banger of a talk.
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Everything is ready for the Perspectives on Scientific Error conference that starts tomorrow in Leiden! I look forward to hanging out with the mix of metascientists, philosophers of science, and statisticians! So many old friends will be there (and hopefully some new ones)! #PSE8
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Danielle Citron @daniellecitron.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
My latest article with the one and only @spenceroverton.bsky.social called “Digital Ethnonationalism” forthcoming in University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here is the papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
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Nila Bala @nilabala.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Thrilled to share that 𝐺𝑢𝑖𝑙𝑡 𝑏𝑦 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑑 has found a home with the Yale Law Journal. This piece examines parental liability regimes and parental rights, and how they are connected by a shared logic that harms children and families. Thank you to all those who read drafts and offered feedback!
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
NOT a recent acceptance but last Feb's paper now on SSRN, w/ many thanks to the excellent editors at Georgia L. Rev. Full paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... (Newer paper still in the cycle & on a very different topic! Sci. ev., skeptics, democracy. On SSRN soon, but lmk if you want to read.)
In civil litigation, strategy is everywhere. Some of it is explicitly envisioned by rules of procedure, but other forms of strategy rely more on clever exploitation of gaps in the rules, sometimes through trickery, surprise, or psychological mind games. The role strategy plays in civil litigation is underexamined, which raises two concerns: first, this lack of attention entrenches strategy by default as a procedural value in competition with accuracy, efficiency, and other procedural values. Second, it amplifies the disadvantages experienced by unrepresented litigants. This Article builds on earlier work to examine how courts shape the space that litigants have for strategic behavior, in service of an inquiry into how that space ought to be shaped.

Battles over the meaning and rightful place of strategy in civil litigation tend to play out in the arena of “gamesmanship,” a term courts use with increasing frequency to refer to behavior in the gray zone between the clearly allowed and the clearly disallowed. Strategic behavior in this realm is often unregulated by rules, only weakly governed by norms, and subject to significant judicial discretion. Judicial decisions in cases involving gamesmanship frequently expose tensions between respect for zealous advocacy and concerns about fairness and accuracy.

This Article makes two contributions to our understanding of the role of strategic behavior in civil litigation. First, it examines the meaning of “gamesmanship” in a litigation context and proposes a categorization of gamesmanlike litigation behavior. Second, it applies this categorization in describing how courts use the term “gamesmanship” and surveys and theorizes how they treat behavior they have thus labeled. I argue that the concept functions as three distinct analytical tools: (1) as an aspect of purposive statutory analysis; (2) as a canon of construction; and (3) as an implied mental-state element. The Article concludes by imagining a different approach.
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Itay Ravid @itayravid.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Another new article of mine is officially out: “(Re)Individualizing Criminal Law,” (67 B.C L. Rev. 255 (2026): lnkd.in/eR9eF7Fv Abstract 👇 & v. short 🧵 1/6
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
How manipulative is this? If you turn off gmail's AI summaries (that nobody asked for), no autocorrect for you.
Screenshot of gmail settings for autocorrect: "Turn on smart features and personalization in Gmail, Chat, and Meet to use autocorrect"
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Statistical Thermodynamics Structure and Reactivity I and II Molecular Simulations Advanced Group Theory Quantum Mechanics
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Elizabeth Chamblee Burch @eburch.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
First signed copies of THE PAIN BROKERS at @barnesandnoble.com Athens! This story that I've held close since 2021 is in your hands now and out everywhere JAN 13. It feels a little tender & terrifying to share it with the world. I hope that you fall in love with the people in it as I have. ❤️
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Tommy Bennett @tommybennett.com · 11/12/2025
Do you want to see the new filings at the Supreme Court each day? I built a tool to do just that. s2.smu.edu/~tbbennett/d...
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Kevin Tobia @kevintobia.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
This is a fascinating new experimental jurisprudence paper from Chris Jaeger on what is "reasonable." For laypeople's judgments of reasonableness, the probability of harm (P) has an important effect beyond its role in the B<PL formula. yalelawjournal.org/article/the-...
yalelawjournal.org
The Hand Formula’s Unequal Inputs | Yale Law Journal
Tort law’s famous Hand Formula does not align with how laypeople judge whether conduct is reasonable. Five original experiments demonstrate that the Hand...
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Ellie Margolis @elliemargolis.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
I wrote a whole article about this problem with @leecarpenter.bsky.social! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
What Law Schools Teach When They Don’t Teach About State Constitutions
State constitutional law has always been an essential component of federalism and a key to understanding the fabric of American law. It is even more important t
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
What are people's recent experiences with SSRN processing timelines? I have had a piece in the queue for 35 days now, and I've reached out twice. Rote response and still queued. @ssrn.bsky.social
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Chris Morten @cmorten.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
🚨New article! "The Second Patent Bargain"!🚨 In it, I argue U.S. law can & should use patent term extension—an obscure but important provision & process—to unlock late-stage, detailed evidence of the safety & effectiveness of drugs, vaccines & other FDA-regulated products. 1/ 🧵
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Worth reading in its entirety, on “healthy frictions.”
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Intriguing new metric. Very curious to see future work on how it correlates with replicability, spin, etc.
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David Simson @dsimson-law.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
I just posted the current version of my most recent Article, "Conceptual Gerrymandering and the Weaponization of SFFA" to @ssrn.bsky.social. Abstract and TOC are attached below. Comments and (good faith) critiques very much welcome and appreciated. 🧵 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Jonathan Harris @jonathanfharris.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Here’s my new @LPEBlog.bsky.social post about Friday’s FTC decision to stop defending its rule banning non-competes. I also highlight how red & blue states are stepping in to defend worker mobility with new legislation & existing consumer & antitrust laws: lpeproject.org/blog/after-t...
lpeproject.org
After the FTC’s Retreat: How States are Rewriting the Rules on Worker Mobility
In a stunning betrayal of 30 million workers, the Federal Trade Commission has abandoned its nationwide ban on non-compete agreements. Fortunately, states are filling the void with remarkable…
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Gilat Bachar @gilatjbachar.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Thank you @lsolum.bsky.social for recommending my new piece, Coercive Settlements, recently published with the George Washington Law Review! @templelaw.bsky.social
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gelbach @gelbach.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
A lot of people have assumed Harvard would cave after Columbia did, especially after that piece of @nytimes.com stenography for the administration (and ridiculous Larry Summers tweet) but so far the signs point to the opposite. See below, plus the Brown deal being announced. Hang tough Harvard.
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
The chapters the author shared with us at the Civil Procedure Workshop last year were so good! Looking forward to reading this.
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Ben Heath @jbentonheath.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
New paper! This essay takes a step toward developing what I call a "jurisprudence of weaponized interdependence.: Building on @himself.bsky.social & @abenewman.bsky.social's groundbreaking work, I develop an account of the legal processes that facilitate the weaponization of networks. 1/x
The phenomenon of weaponized interdependence, as defined by political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, is a powerful tool for understanding today's global economic conflicts. But to date its uptake in the legal literature (including by this author) has been largely superficial, limited to the observation that economic interdependence coming under increased strain from the growing use of sanctions, export controls, investment screening, and similar measures. The real epistemic power of weaponized interdependence is to make political science nimble—able to identify and analyze similar dynamics across seemingly unconnected issue areas—remains largely untapped.


This essay sketches an approach for developing a jurisprudence of weaponized interdependence, focusing on what Farrell and Newman term the "panopticon effect." It identifies four legal processes—herding, enclosure, legibility, and jurisdictional politics—which create the conditions for weaponizing a network. The essay develops an account of these four processes by reopening the case study of the SWIFT financial messaging system, which also figures prominently in Farrell and Newman's own work. The history of the SWIFT network, this essay argues, shows how law—defined broadly and understood across many sites of lawmaking—intervenes at critical points to create the conditions for weaponization. 

In developing this account, this essay also serves as a proof of concept for a broader jurisprudence of weaponized interdependence, which could make lawyers similarly nimble in confronting the manifold challenges of a politicized global economy in times of rapid technological change and rising authoritarianism.
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Ben Heath @jbentonheath.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Temple Law is hiring this year. We're looking in torts, tax, constitutional law, civil procedure, race/bias and the law, business law, and legal writing. The full ad and application portal is here. I'm chairing the committee; please reach out! law.temple.edu/engage/prosp...
law.temple.edu
Temple Law Faculty Application - Temple Law
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Tomboyish Transfemme @naomihofficial.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Really badass graffiti spotted in town
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Ex-farm worker here. We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing. Not true AT ALL. Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are. The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour. At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
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Ben Heath @jbentonheath.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
This is an excellent story, which quotes my @templelaw.bsky.social colleague Laura Bingham. It also provides useful context, showing how the rise of anti-immigrant, technologically powered national security state finds precedents in Obama-era policy. www.npr.org/2025/06/30/n...
npr.org
DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship
Denaturalization is a tactic heavily used during the McCarthy era and one that was expanded during the Obama administration and grew further during President Trump's first term. It's a tool usually us...
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Mask-off racism and fascism from Pinocchiogles — if a New York congressman tried to meddle with local Tennessee politics like this he would lose his hypocritical mind
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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
As folks chew on the new @pewresearch.org analysis of non-voters in 2020 and 2024, I'm here to say that the only time in U.S. history voting was made a legal duty, it happened because conservative incumbents felt threatened by a changing electorate and hoped 100% turnout would save them. 🧵
pewresearch.org
1. Voter turnout, 2020-2024
Overall and across most demographic groups, Trump’s 2020 voters turned out at higher rates in 2024 than Biden’s did, a Pew Research Center analysis shows.
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Duncan Hollis @duncanhollis.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
So pleased after 3+ years of work to see this in print ... Whether you like originalism or not, I've tried to offer insights on why the Constitution uses terms like treaties & compacts (to say nothing of Benedict Arnold's 'sponsion' or Gen. Washington's 'executive' agreement with Lord Cornwallis)
scholarship.law.upenn.edu
The Original Meaning of Treaties
For nearly two centuries, all three branches of the federal government have thought that the original meaning of the Constitution’s references to treaties and compacts was lost. This Article aims to r...
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SSRN @ssrn.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
#Unsticking Litigation Science In this symposium paper, the author describes how litigation science and academic science are currently on #divergent paths. Author: Edith Beerdsen Read More: spkl.io/63325fAMAL
Silver framed eyeglasses next to black computer and book.
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Paul Bogdan @pbogdan.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Thrilled to see a news piece by @science.org on my recent paper. By analyzing p-values across >240k papers, the study suggests that the rate of statistically questionable findings in psychology has declined since the replication crisis began www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
‘A big win’: Dubious statistical results are becoming less common in psychology
Fewer papers are reporting findings on the border of statistical significance, a potential marker of dodgy research practices
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Interesting thread on the politics of science vs engineering
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Kind of interesting that (some of) the big-co clients are proving themselves to be more principled than (some of) the law firms.
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Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
1. NEW At least 11 major companies are moving away from doing business with the law firms that caved and signed deals with Trump. Even though some of these companies are led by executives who support Trump, they do not feel comfortable having a law firm that caved to threats representing them.
bit.ly
The Law Firms That Appeased Trump—and Angered Their Clients
After firms struck deals to avoid punitive executive orders, some big clients decided to take their business elsewhere.
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Edith Beerdsen @edithbeerdsen.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
. @inquirer.com, could we get some data on how much revenue comes from these international students? It's probably quite significant. These actions don't affect only the directly affected students. www.inquirer.com/education/tr...
inquirer.com
As Trump targets international students, here’s who it could affect in the Philly region
More than 41,500 international students study in Pennsylvania. Trump's targeting them could affect University of Pennsylvania, Drexel, Swarthmore, Penn State, Rutgers, Temple and others.
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