Prof. Brandon Waldon is a researcher specializing in linguistics, philosophy, and law. He is a Fulbright Scholar at Leibniz-ZAS Berlin and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University. He also worked as a postdoc at Georgetown University.
In his research, he focuses on how context, linguistic meaning, and social cognition influence communication. He also addresses issues of modality, vagueness, and conversational implicature, as well as the use of linguistic and philosophical tools in the interpretation of legal texts. He is also interested in artificial intelligence, particularly at its intersection with language, meaning, and interpretation.
Both events will take place on May 28, 2026:
- 9:45 a.m., Room 3.20 – a seminar for faculty and doctoral students titled “Linguistics & Textualism”,
- 11:30 a.m., Auditorium 5 – a lecture for students titled “Large Language Models for Legal Interpretation? Don’t Take Their Word for It.”
Can a judge ask ChatGPT about the meaning of a word in an insurance contract? One already has. The lecture will discuss the growing practice of judges using language models (LLMs) to interpret legal texts and the reasons why this is risky. We will learn what prejudiced prompting is, how a slight change in the question asked of a chatbot can lead to completely opposite legal conclusions—and what alternative, more responsible approaches we can propose.
Photo: University of South Carolina
