Sayid Al-Obaidi

Hello!

I am a law and philosophy scholar. I am based in New York City, and I work at Fairfield University as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy.

In 2024-25, I did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. In 2023, I did a predoctoral fellowship at the University of Salzburg in Austria. In 2024, I finished the JD/PhD program at UC, Irvine.

sayid bnefsi

The Difference of Differential Punishment, in 19 Criminal Law and Philosophy 421 (2025) (Article)

Willful Ignorance in Law and Epistemology, in 204 Synthese 171 (2024) (Article)

Compensatory Preliminary Damages: Access to Justice as Corrective Justice, in 27 CUNY Law Review 70 (2024) (Note)

Future Bias and Regret, in David Jakobsen, Peter Øhrstrøm & Per Hasle (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Time 1 (2023) Aalborg: Aalborg University Press (Chapter)

Epistemic Isomorphism, in 53(4) Metaphilosophy 543 (2022) (Article)

Great Risks from Small Benefits Grow, in 49 Philosophia 603 (2021) (Essay)

The Argument from Sideways Music, in 9(1) Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 64 (2020) (Essay)

Future Bias and Presentism, in David Jakobsen, Per Hasle & Peter Øhrstrøm (eds.), The Metaphysics of Time 281 (2020) Aalborg: Aalborg University Press (Chapter)

B-Theory and Time Biases, in Patrick Blackburn, Per Hasle & Peter Øhrstrøm (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Time 41 (Vol. 2) (2019) Aalborg: Aalborg University Press (Chapter)

In my research, I explore philosophical questions about law. Currently, I am interested in the nature of criminal agency under anomalous conditions, where what a person intends, knows, does or causes deviate in a sense that challenges traditional notions of responsibility, culpability, and liability as well as how the law applies these notions in practice. In this connection, I am especially interested in errors of action and belief, ignorance, luck, underdetermination, overdetermination, and other imperfections of agency that create wedges between our moral and legal judgments about some case; I use philosophical theorizing and primary sources of law to reconstruct solutions to such challenges that track universal ideas of blame, desert, and legal justification.

My name is Saad "Sayid" Al-Obaidi. I was publishing as "Sayid Bnefsi," but now I'm publishing as "Sayid Al-Obaidi." If citing to my earlier work, please include a parenthetical (now "Sayid Al-Obaidi") after each mention.