Project description

This project synthesizes existing empirical knowledge about why people obey or break legal rules from across the social and behavioral sciences. In doing so, it seeks to make the question of how law shapes future conduct (i.e., law’s ex-ante behavioral function) more central to the field of law.

The project aims to demonstrate to legal scholars, students and practitioners i) what behavioral mechanisms are at play in how people respond to the law, ii) how these mechanisms interact, and iii) what this means for developing effective interventions to reduce rule breaking and harmful behavior.

To achieve these goals, the research takes three steps. First, it will conduct a series of literature reviews, which the project has commissioned from leading scholars worldwide. This will culminate in the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook on Compliance (CUP). Second, it will publish an accessible book aimed at a general audience, The Invisible Code (Beacon Press, Boston), supported by a series of popular opinion and magazine articles. Third, it will develop new theory, by integrating the knowledge from the literature reviews with novel insights on the behavioral assumptions of lawyers (Project 1, see above). This will culminate in a series of articles that demonstrate i) what the ex-ante function of law is, ii) why it matters, iii) what empirical knowledge we have about it, iv) how this is different from current legal and lawyerly thinking, v) what causes such differences, and vi) how legal thought, education and practice should come to incorporate this, in order to make the ex-ante function of law more central.

This project is carried out by C-LAB members (Noor de Bruijn, Emmeke Kooistra, Chris Reinders Folmer and Benjamin van Rooij) in collaboration with Adam Fine (psychology and criminology, Arizona State University) and Daniel Sokol (anti-trust law and compliance, Florida State University), as well as with other leading scholars from major institutions (including Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, NYU School of Law, MIT Sociology, Stanford Psychology, the World Bank, and Melbourne University  Sociology). This project is also funded by the ERC Consolidator Grant.

Relevant publications and works in progress:

• van Rooij, Benjamin, and Adam Fine. The Invisible Code, Why the Law Fails to Improve Our Behavior. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2021 (forthcoming).
• van Rooij, Benjamin, and Daniel Sokol, eds. Cambridge Handbook of Compliance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020 (forthcoming).
• van Rooij, Benjamin. "Behavioral Jurisprudence: The Quest for Knowledge About the Ex-Ante Function of Law and Behavior". Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies  (2019 [forthcoming]).
• van Rooij, B., & Fine, A. (2021 (forthcoming)). The Opportunity Approach to Compliance. In B. Van Rooij & D. D. Sokol (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Compliance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• van Rooij, B., & Fine, A. (2021 (forthcoming)). The Opportunity Approach to Compliance. In B. Van Rooij & D. D. Sokol (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Compliance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.