【作者】米切尔,G.
【内容提要】
Legal scholars increasingly rely on a behavioral analysis of judgment and decision-making to explain legal phenomena and argue for legal reforms. The main argument of this new behavioral analysis of the law is twofold: (1) all human cognition is beset by systematic flaws in the way that judgments and decisions are made, and these flaws lead to predictable irrational behaviors; (2) these widespread and systematic non-rational tendencies bring into serious question the assumption of procedural rationality underlying much legal doctrine and, thus, bring into question the wisdom of this legal doctrine. This paper examines the psychological research relied on by legal behavioralists to form this argument and demonstrates that this research does not support the bleak and simple portrait of pervasive irrationality painted by these scholars. Careful scrutiny of the psychological research reveals greater adherence to norms of rationality than that implied by the legal behavioralists, and the methodological and interpretive limitations on this psychological research make extrapolation from experimental settings to real world legal settings often inappropriate. Accordingly, this paper argues that legal scholars should exercise greater care and precision in their uses of psychological data to avoid advocating further legal reforms based on flawed understandings of psychological research.