The Law of Good People - Chapter 11 - Conclusion and Normative Implications

This concluding chapter provides some of the normative implications of the “Law of Good People” paradigm I have attempted to articulate in the book. The chapter focuses on few strategies that legal policy makers can adopt to create a behaviorally “responsive regulation” which will be sensitive to the variation among people and situations. The first strategy is a taxonomy which highlights the areas in which greater scrutiny and command and control approaches towards the ethical behavior of individuals should be exercised rather than softer approaches which are based on nudges and incentives It takes into account the type of individual we are attempting to regulate, the moral “wiggle room” of the situation, the relative availability of excuses for justifying behavior, what proportion of the target population needs to cooperate for the policy to work, is there a moral consensus with regard to the behavior in question; how long does the behavioral change need to last and what is the cost of Noncompliance. In addition the chapter discusses other strategies such as sequential responsive regulation, situational design, ethical nudges, smarter use of uncertainty, ethical training, which aim to change people’s ethical preferences and implicit ethical behaviors and a discussion of the limitations of these approaches given the challenges raised by unaware effects on people’s ethical self-perception