Symposium: The Psychology of International Law

• Puig, Sergio 1

Abstract

A flourishing number of bodies evaluate the conduct of government officials against broad standards, decide complex questions of scientific probity and calculate the present value of past decisions. The effects of implicit biases (systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment) impact the assessment of these issues, which are central to international economic law. Such effects are well understood by psychologists and increasingly confirmed by experiments involving legal actors, including judges. In this article, I provide three concrete examples of implicit biases affecting international tax, trade and investment adjudication, and I call for the incorporation of mechanisms to overcome such biases as well as their strategic exploitation by litigants. At a conceptual level, I propose a typology to think of ‘debiasing tools’ for international adjudication – mechanisms that can act as a centrepiece of coordination of information rather than mere inoculants of the habits of mind on adjudicators. At a normative level, I pose that biases may impact confidence in dispute settlement systems and that both concerns for sovereignty and a predilection for negotiated solutions make international economic law ripe for testing these interventions.

• 1James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA