Cognitive Science and Law

This article examines the compatibility of law and robotics by comparing robotic and human legal-decision making. In a scenario where a robot and a person make exactly the same legal decision, with the same factual consequences, there would still be an important difference between the robotic and human decision-making processes. People will be able to relate to the human decision-maker, and this capacity shapes the judgment individuals have over the fairness of the decision and its outcome. Concurrently, individuals are not able to relate to the robot in the same scenario, and to reproduce the conditions of relatability in the robot is unforeseeable with the current development of cognitive sciences. Our capacity to judge the fairness or unfairness of the actions of others shapes our acceptance of and faith in the legal system. Robots making legal decisions would not recreate the same conditions of trust in the fairness of the legal-system, which is one source of incompatibilities between law and robotics.

How does a lawyer think? Does legal intuition exist? Do lawyers need imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? It is no longer possible to answer these questions by applying philosophical analysis alone. Recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of the human mental faculties and the tools we use to solve problems. A new picture of the functioning of the legal mind is emerging. In The Legal Mind, Bartosz Brożek uses philosophical arguments and insight from the cognitive sciences to depict legal thinking as a close cooperation between three cognitive mechanisms - intuition, imagination, and language - and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these mental tools. This novel and provocative approach provides a fresh perspective on legal thinking and gives rise to important questions pertaining to the limits of legal interpretation and rationality in the law.

What we present here are the outlines of a research program. In sections 1 and 2, we give a rough picture of the “cognitive revolution”, the context in which our program situates. In section 3, we briefly review some well-established lines of inquiry germane to ours (behavioural law and economics; criminal responsibility and imputability; heuristics and biases in
adjudication). Section 4 is devoted to the core of our research program: what are the psychological processes involved in the understanding, issuing and complying with norms, and in rule-based decision-making? Subsequently, in the last two sections, we give a glimpse on what we have done already (not much), and on what we plan to do in the next future.

[Contents]

1. The Future Trends (S&T) in Prospect
2. What is Cognitive Science ?
3. Major Research Results in Cognitive Science and Its Implications for Law
4. Attempts to Connect Law and  Cognitive Science
5. Theoretical Basis for Cognitive Science of Law
- Bounded rationality
- Embodied Cognition
- Narrative Approach
6. Conclusion

• The brain is a predictive machine. We will see the application of this finding to practical situations of great importance to law, such as shared representations of the body and the self, natural language comprehension, simultaneous  interpretation, and in different areas of the Law, in common law and civil law, such as contracts, obligations, torts/responsabilité civile délictuelle, and estoppel.
• Le cerveau est une machine à prédire. Nous verrons l’application de ce constat dans des situations concrètes de grande importance pour le droit comme le corps et le soi, la compréhension de la langue naturelle, l’interprétation simultanée, dans  différents domaine de la common law et du droit civil comme les contrats, les obligations, les délits civils et la responsabilité civile délictuelle, et l’estoppel

Metaphor and metonymy are not mere tropes, but instruments for reasoning in law and about law. Another illustration that Law is a cognitive tool created by homo sapiens.
La métaphore et la métonymie ne sont pas seulement des tropes, mais des instruments pour raisonner en droit et à propos du droit. Un autre exemple de ce que le droit est un instrument cognitif créé par homo sapiens.

Abstract The article deals with the relationship among law and cognitive sciences placing the analysis in a wider discussion on the horizons of modern legal science. The interest in cognitive sciences is presented as a contribution to a new cultural perspective in which ...

Lo studio empirico dei processi biologici e mentali sottesi all’adozione delle scelte individuali delimita un’area di ricerca oggetto d’interesse crescente nelle scienze sociali. Il contributo propone una breve riflessione sulle possibili intersezioni tra quest’area e il diritto focalizzando l’attenzione sulla scelta intertemporale, ossia sul ruolo svolto dalla percezione del tempo nel determinare il contenuto delle decisioni degli esseri umani. Il fatto che i vantaggi (o gli svantaggi) potenzialmente derivanti da una qualsiasi scelta individuale (fare investimento, seguire una dieta, investire tempo o risorse nello studio) siano più o meno distanti nel tempo ha un effetto sulle nostre scelte, un effetto che può essere studiato, misurato e previsto in maniera sempre più attendibile.  Il lavoro intende segnalare un tema di indagine per l’area di ricerca che sta maturando ai confini tra diritto, neuroscienze, scienze cognitive, scienze comportamentali evidenziandone al contempo le ricadute applicative, le implicazioni di carattere scientifico, le conseguenze sul piano metodologico.