Project description

This project analyses empirically how people develop a general duty to obey the law. It studies whether people obey legal rules, even if i) they do not directly agree with them, ii) such rules are not enforced, and iii) most others do not comply with them. This duty is a vital aspect of our rule of law and of the functioning of legal systems. The project will result in the development and testing of a new model for the development of people’s obligation to obey the law. This model will go beyond people’s perception of the legal system and the level of procedural justice it provides, and will examine how their sense of obligation may be shaped by i) socialization (parenting, education), ii) personal traits (moral disengagement, moral firmness etc.), and iii) political orientation. The resulting model will demonstrate which processes contribute to people’s felt duty to obey the law – and thereby will inspire more successful interventions to enhance this. This project is carried out by Benjamin van Rooij (C-LAB) and Adam Fine (Arizona State University, psychology and criminology), in collaboration with (a.o.) Shaul Shalvi (University of Amsterdam, behavioral ethics), Yuval Feldman (Bar Ilan University, Faculty of Law, behavioral ethics), and Beth Cauffman (UC Irvine, developmental psychology). 

Relevant publications and works in progress:

• Van Rooij, B., Adam Fine, Shaul Shalvi, Yuval Feldman, Eline Scheper, Wu Yunmei, Margarita Leib, Cheng Qian, and Wanhong Zhang. "Obligation to Obey the Law: Understanding Variation Beyond Perception of the Legal System." Draft paper in progress  (2019).
• Fine, A., Thomas, A., van Rooij, B., & Cauffman, E. (2020). Age-Graded Differences and Parental Influences on Adolescents’ Obligation to Obey the Law. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 1-18.
• Fine, Adam, and Benjamin Van Rooij. "For Whom Does Deterrence Affect Behavior? Identifying Key Individual Differences." Law and Human Behavior 41, no. 4 (2017): 356-60.
• Fine, Adam, Benjamin Van Rooij, Yuval Feldman, Shaul Shalvi, Margerita Leib, Eline Scheper, and Elizabeth Cauffman. "Rule Orientation and Behavior: Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Individual Acceptance of Rule Violation." Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 22, no. 3 (2016): 314-29.