Anne-Lise Sibony

L’analyse comportementale du droit Manifeste pour un nouveau champ de recherche en Europe

To be effective, legal rules need to incorporate a representation of human behaviour that is as accurate as possible. In this regard, Behavioural Sciences offer useful insights, which law can helpfully draw on. In this article, we present a scholarly movement which has developed over the past twenty years and provides ways to integrate behavioural insights in legal analysis and policy-making. We first make explicit the premises of behavioural legal analysis. We then discuss how the integrated study of law and behavioural sciences should be named (in French). Next, we define the scope of this interdisciplinary field of study by describing its objects and characteristic research questions. Finally, we give a brief overview of methodological issues. With this introduction to behavioural analysis of law, we hope to draw more European legal researchers into the field.

Internationalising Legal Education in Belgium: Why Are We Doing It?

Internationalisation of legal education is a topical yet little discussed issue in Belgium. The issues of how international law curricula should be arises in connection with the transition from a content-based to a skill-based approach, a horizontal evolution in European higher education which also concerns legal education. While there is a diffuse consensus among both practitioners and academics that some degree of internationalisation is a good thing, law schools do not necessarily have a clear vision of what internationalisation is precisely good for. This may explain a certain degree of diversity in the degree and modalities of internationalisation among Belgian law schools.

Can EU Consumer Law Benefit From Behavioural Insights

This paper explores in what ways insights from social psychology could be used to shape the interpretation of European law on unfair practices. It is argued that insights from social psychology on influencing techniques are relevant to the interpretation of the directive on unfair practices. Both conceptual and empirical insights from psychology are valuable from a legal point of view. They could respectively translate as new elements of legal tests or as presumptions. Le droit europeen de la consommation repose sur une image du consommateur tres eloignee de la realite telle que nous percevons mais aussi des enseignements des sciences comportementales. Cet article examine de quelles manieres utiliser les apports des sciences du comportement peuvent etre utiles a l’interpretation de la legislation europeenne sur les pratiques deloyales. Plus particulierement, il s’attache a identifier les enseignements de la psychologie sociale relatifs aux techniques d’influence qui presentent un interet pour l’interpretation de la directive sur les pratiques commerciales deloyales. Ces apports ne sont pas lies a une tradition juridique nationale en particulier et pourraient donc contribuer a uniformiser l’interpretation du droit europeen dans le domaine des pratiques commerciales deloyales. Les enseignements de la psychologie qui presentent une utilite pour le droit sont a la fois conceptuels et empiriques. Afin de se servir de ces apports dans la pratique juridique actuelle, il est necessaire de se pencher sur les methodes par lesquelles le droit peut les integrer. A cet egard, les presomptions semblent etre un moyen tres approprie pour incorporer dans le droit les enseignements des sciences. comportementales.