A Behavioral Approach in Legal Research
The article explores the methodological features of a behavioral approach in legal research. The author defines behavioral analysis of law as the application of empirical behavioral evidence to the analysis of legal norms and institutions. This definition has helped to outline the boundaries of the behavioral approach and some of its central methodological features, organized around the points outlined. The methods used include comparative analysis, generalization, concretization, historical, psychological, statistical, logical, functional, and the behavioral method proper. The conclusions of the study are the following provisions. General statements explain that the effectiveness of a law often depends on the extent to which it takes into account relevant patterns of human behavior, primarily those that have been identified by behavioral scientists and researchers in related fields. The author attempts to explain that behaviorism is both normatively neutral and normatively meaningful. The requirement of normative neutrality is stressed, since debates in the legal literature sometimes tend to confuse the behavioral approach as a whole with its particular, though most central and prominent, version of behavioral law and economics. The normative relevance of behavioral law analysis in conjunction with other normative approaches is illustrated separately. In particular, this part examines the current debate among legal scholars as to whether behavioral conclusions, from a social welfare perspective, justify paternalistic (state) intervention. Weighing the evidence on the disadvantages and advantages of behavioral paternalism, this part reveals that justified intervention must overcome many obstacles beyond a mere proof of human error. From a social welfare perspective, however, such interventions can sometimes be useful. In view of the above, the scientist's cognitive attitude, combining both critical and self-critical analysis of scientific achievements, which, in turn, is conditioned by the amount of knowledge about the quantity and quality of existing methodological approaches in legal research, one of which is the behaviorist one, seems to be productive.
Keywords
legal science,
methodology,
behaviorism,
formation of beliefs,
decision makingAuthors
| Zyryanov Aleksey V. | South Ural State University | zav-nauka@mail.ru |
Всего: 1
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