The Relativity of Judgment as a Challenge for Behavioral Law and Economics

From the introduction: "The impact of the law and economics movement on legal scholarship and legal policy analysis has been astonishing. Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman has referred to it as the most important development in legal scholarship of the twentieth century. But while economic theory and research was making inroads into legal scholarship, psychological theory and research was making inroads into economics. Psychologists working in the judgment and decision making (JDM) tradition have has challenged two core aspects of the rational choice model its assumptions about human rationality and human motivation. Psychologists have conclusively demonstrated persuasively that human cognition routinely operates via processes that systematically violate the axiomatic assumptions of rational choice theory. Less conclusively, psychologists have argued that human motivation is more volatile and more complex than can be captured in a simple self-interested utility function." Source: JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working Papers. Paper 42.

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