People
Directors
Nathan Schneider, PhD is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science at Georgetown University. His work in computational linguistics and natural language processing is devoted to studying the computation of meaning. Topics include syntactic/semantic corpus annotation, LLM interpretability, and metalanguage (including legal metalanguage).
Kevin Tobia, JD, PhD is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he teaches Legislation, Torts, Legal Philosophy, Interpretation, and Foundations of American Legal Thought. His research concerns statutory interpretation, textualism, and empirical methods in interpretation. He has also written broadly in “experimental jurisprudence”—a growing school of legal philosophy that complements traditional philosophical analysis with empirical methods.
Brandon Waldon, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. His research employs theoretical, experimental, and computational linguistic methods to a variety of problems and legal interpretation. His interests within linguistic theory include modality, vagueness/imprecision, and conversational implicature.
Members
Dawson Petersen, PhD is a postdoctoral Fritz Fellow in Linguistics and Computer Science at Georgetown University. His interdisciplinary research program investigates anthropomorphism in language and thought—with a particular focus on how anthropomorphic language affects readers’ perceptions of AI systems. In the LegIT lab, he works to apply cognitive science and psycholinguistic methods to inform experimental jurisprudence.
Lillian Ehrhart is a Master’s student in Computational Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her research uses corpora to investigate judicial application of canons of legal interpretation, particularly noscitur a sociis. She is building and annotating a corpus of statutory language to which noscitur has been applied, with the ultimate goal of identifying historical patterns of application.
Eilat Herman is an undergraduate student in Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences’ class of 2026 and an incoming JD candidate at Georgetown University Law Center. She studies Government and Linguistics, with particular interests in constitutional law and syntax. In the LegIT lab, she is conducting an experimental study on syntactic constraints governing the Supreme Court’s application of the noscitur a sociis canon and treebanking an annotated corpus of statutory language.
Collaborators
See academic research.
Faculty Affiliates
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Legislation
Ralph V. Whitworth Professor in Law | Director
Professor | Chair, Department of Computer Science