Project description

This project carries out similar research as the Behavioral Intuition project but focuses it on lawyers. This project studies how lawyers who are tasked with changing behavior and reducing misconduct (prosecutors, regulators and in-house counsel) think about the way that their work can actually achieve this. It analyses to what extent their beliefs are in line with existing scientific insights, and thereby exposes biases and flaws in their thinking.

The project also examines what causes variation in the way that lawyers think about behavior, by studying i) the reception of social science in law, ii) the socialization of lawyers, and iii) the practical and political context of behavioral legal work, and their impact on the usage of empirical scientific insights.

This project is funded by the European Research Council by means of an ERC Consolidator Grant. It is carried out by Malouke Kuiper, Megan Brownlee, Shuyu Huang, Emmeke Kooistra, Noor de Bruijn, Chris Reinders Folmer and Benjamin van Rooij (all UvA C-LAB).

Relevant publications and works in progress:

• Liu, Ning, Benjamin Van Rooij, and Carlos Wing‐Hung Lo. "Beyond Deterrent Enforcement Styles: Behavioural Intuitions of Chinese Environmental Law Enforcement Agents in a Context of Challenging Inspections." Public Administration 96 (2018): 497-512.