Homo Ludicus: Expected Strategies and Jurisprudence

Joint intentionality is a concept en vogue in general jurisprudence. Rich- ard Ekins has relied on joint intentionality to account for how legislatures can have intentions. At a more foundational level, Scott Shapiro has relied on shared intentions for explaining the normativity of legality. In this essay, we propose a metaphysically parsimonious approach called “expected-strategies approach”, combined with a team- reasoning approach to legislation. Based on a game-theoretic perspective, this approach anchors normativity to our capacity of coordinating our actions, both at the level of the law-maker, and at the level of the legal subjects. We show that for this coordinat- ing function, an understanding of other players’ expected strategies is sufficient. The expected-strategies approach portrays the rational agent as a homo ludicus, whose key social virtues are stability and predictability.