R. George Wright (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law) has posted Thought Experiments in the Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Our responses to thought experiments inform our understanding of, and our normative beliefs about, the law. Such thought experiments may involve, for example, the use of interrogational torture in the context of great public danger; desperately trapped amateur cave explorers; runaway trolleys, and other such scenarios. Law students and appellate advocates are invariably counseled, understandably, to accept, and thus not to fight, a posed hypothetical. As it turns out, though, for reasons explored herein, failing to intelligently fight the hypothetical at any point is generally a serious mistake.
And from the paper:
[T]he Trolley Problem, like the Ticking Bomb Thought Experiments, and Professor Fuller’s Speluncean Explorers, must inevitably miss the vital role, in moral and legal decision making, of experiences and of gradually accruing feedback and habituation, in our cultivation of the essential epistemic and moral virtues.
If you are interested in this topic, I recommend Daniel Dennett's discussion of intuition pumps: Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking.
Wright's paper is very interesting and recommended.
