Debiasing By Law: Rules Vs. Standards

Debiasing by Law: Rules vs. Standards

 

The distinction between rules and standards is central to legal theory and to the practice of any judging. Recently there is a growing interest in this distinction, and particularly in the role that these distinct types of rules may play in the process of decision making.. From the point of view of Behavioral Decision Theory (BDT), law can be regarded as a social mechanism aimed to prevent, control or compensate for human cognitive biases. In this respect, the choice between different types of legal rules may be highly relevant to the kind of strategy that the law may adopt as a vehicle to debias legal decision makers.   . Research in BDT, however, is only beginning to address major questions regarding the impact of rules on legal decision-making of judges and bureaucrats.

We join the efforts to probe into the function of different types of rules and their effect on debiasing cognitive errors in legal decision-making, specifically focusing on the context of competitive bidding procedures (CBs). We propose a series of studies aimed to test the impact of cognitive bias on evaluations and decisions made by public officials who specialize and are experienced in CB procedures, versus lay people, under varying  types of  rule conditions, i.e. discretionary,  clear-cut rules, and ambiguous standards.