This chapter considers the psychological, methodological, and normative paths taken by behavioral law and economics ("BLE") and alternative paths that BLE might have taken, and might still take. The counterfactual BLE imagined here stresses the B in BLE, with behavioral approaches to legal problems being the focus rather than advocacy of any particular basic model of human cognition and motivation to compete with L&E’s dominant model. This change in focus would give priority to empirical studies in which particular legal institutions and specific legal tasks are simulated or studied in situ rather than to studies of abstract and general judgment and decision-making problems that may provide more theoretical bang but have less applied payoff in specific legal contexts.
Memory issues are well-known in legal trials that involve the reliability of eyewitnesses in criminal cases. However, the relevance of memory to law...
Evidence law controls what information will be admissible in court and when, how, and by whom it may be presented. It shapes not only the trial...
There is concern that present-biased agents incur too much debt because of its deferred costs – concern that has influenced regulation of consumer...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
False information causes harm, threatening individuals, groups, and society. Many people struggle to judge the veracity of the information around them...
This article examines the impact of Greece retroactively, via legislation, changing the terms in hundreds of billions of euros worth of Greek...
Income inequality is a national preoccupation, and the public’s imagination is captured by the astronomical incomes of Valley tech billionaires and...
There is a live debate going on over whether antitrust should take a broader view of the economics of market concentration. When antitrust reformers...
We examine the legal terms in the market for green bonds, debt instruments in which proceeds are earmarked, directly or indirectly, for projects with...
The SEC mandates that public companies assess new information that changes the risks that they face and disclose these if there has been a “material”...
Countries hit by unexpected crises often look to their overseas diasporas for assistance. Some countries have tapped into this generosity of their...
The conventional view is that standardized boilerplate terms represent an optimal contractual solution to the contracting problems facing parties in...
Professor Elizabeth Scott, the chief reporter of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Children and the Law, has often observed that the...
Consequential damages have been a cornerstone of contract doctrine since the broken crankshaft in Hadley v. Baxendale. And the Hadley rule is one of...
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Justice Thomas’s majority opinion announced that the key to applying originalist methodology...
In this article, we examine the relations between risk, the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters), and maturity in the sovereign debt...
Both theorists and courts commonly assume that high-dollar financial contracts between sophisticated parties are free of linguistic errors...