HIV/AIDS has a severe impact on food security, affecting all of its dimensions: availability, stability, access, utilization. FAO recognizes that HIV/AIDS is a determining factor for, as well as a consequence of, food insecurity. Although the relationships among gender, food security and rural...

Judges are obliged to give reasons for their decisions. A set of formal and informal norms specifies how this is to be done. These norms serve a whole array of purposes. This paper shows that one substantial effect is on decision quality. The effect can even be demonstrated on an ad hoc basis....

The novel part of this paper is a model of the principle of proportionality, as the cornerstone of the doctrine of fundamental rights. German law, and with some modifications also the law of the European Community and the European Convention on Human Rights, do not categorically outlaw...

In an experimental study we investigated effects of information amount and legal training on the judgment accuracy in legal cases. In a two (legal training: yes vs. no) x two (information amount: high vs. low) between-subjects design, 90 participants judged the premeditation of a perpetrator in...

Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or prosecutor leads to role induced bias even if people are highly motivated to give unbiased judgments. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal...

More than one hundred years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court started to refer to social science evidence in its judgments. However, this has not resonated with many constitutional courts outside the United States, in particular in continental Europe. This contribution has a twofold aim. First, it...

The paper deals with the complexity of legal norms and the instrument the German constitutional law establishes to control it, namely the requirement of normative clarity. First, I introduce a definition of complexity of written legal norms, conceptualized by their density (number of items to be...

We examine the properties of alternative monetary policy rules in response to large aid surges in low-income countries characterized by incomplete capital market integration and currency substitution. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that simple monetary rules that...