In the last decades, cognitive science has deeply changed our understanding of human reasoning and decision making. As depicted by contemporary cognitive science, the human mind appears, first, as an intuition-driven device, making use of cognitive shortcuts (heuristics) which may easily lead to systematic cognitive distortions (biases); and, second, as an emotional device, whose apt reasoning and decision making, far from being the product of cool and disembodied cognition, relies on affective mechanisms grounded in the body. This picture is at odds with the dominant approach, both normative and descriptive, to legal (and especially judicial) decision making. Adjudication, in the mainstream self-narrative, is still regarded as the realm of dispassionate reason and argumentation. In the last decades, however, several research programs have been developed, aiming at updating our understanding of the “legal mind" on the basis of the contributions coming from cognitive science. “Emotions and the law”, “Heuristics and the law”, “Neuro-law”, “Law and Intuition”, “Law and embodied cognition”, have become central topics, and fortunate catchwords, in the academic debate. Moreover, cognitive models of legal reasoning have become increasingly important in order, first, to design AI systems mirroring reasonable legal decision making, and, second, to highlight constraints and limitations to which this activity is subject. Despite its crucial importance, this body of knowledge is not part of the usual training of European lawyers. This is a serious gap in legal education, with significant consequences. Legal scholars and professionals usually lack even basic knowledge of the cognitive mechanisms governing legal reasoning and decision making, and of the most common biases and distorting factors that lead reasoning and decision astray. They are unaware of the personal and environmental conditions which increase the probability of falling prey of such cognitive distortions, and they lack knowledge of, and the ability to apply, cognitive strategies and techniques aimed at preventing them. The main objective of RECOGNISE is to develop a training curriculum on legal reasoning and cognitive science filling this gap. The training will be targeted at newly graduated, post-graduates and Master students, PhD students, Post-doc researchers, teaching staff in Law Departments, as well as legal professionals (in particular, barristers and judges). This objective will be achieved through the production of three intellectual outputs: O1: a training curriculum on legal reasoning and cognitive science, articulated in three different formats: Intensive Study Program (5-10 days training); LLM Course (3-6 months training); E-learning Course (18 video-lectures); O2: an online handbook, providing comprehensive and practice-oriented information on the relevant topics; the handbook will be freely accessible on the project's online platform; O3: an online platform, which, besides gathering all the project's material, including the handbook, will contain the full-developed e-learning course. Both the training format and the handbook are organized within a general framework articulated in six thematic units: 1. Heuristics and biases in adjudication; 2. Emotions and adjudication; 3. Intuition and legal reasoning; 4. The cognitive structure of legal concepts; 5. Defeasible reasoning, law, cognitive science; 6. Legal reasoning, cognitive science, Artificial Intelligence. As intermediate steps in the development of the project, we plan to realize: (i) two Intensive Study Programs, the first in Ljubljana and the second in Palermo, with the collaboration of the local Bar Associations; (ii) a public presentation of the online platform, to be held in Maastricht. At the end of the project, a final conference, to be held in Krakow, will summarize and disseminate the outcomes of the project. The project consortium gathers six academic partners with excellent and complementary expertise on the addressed topics: the University of Palermo (leading organization), the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, the University of Bologna, the Maastricht University, the University of Alicante, the University of Ljubljana. In order to assure a tight exchange between theoretical and practical perspectives, two Bar Associations (Palermo's and Ljubljana's) will participate to the project as associated partners.
The main objective of RECOGNISE was contributing to fill this gap, by (i) developing a training curriculum on legal reasoning and cognitive science targeted at newly graduated, post-graduates and Master students, PhD students, Post-doc researchers, teaching staff in Law Departments, as well as legal professionals; (ii) implementing a series of learning activities, specified below; (iii) realizing materials that could be used for such a training, including, in particular, an innovative book gathering contributions by experts both in legal theory and in cognitive science; (iv) disseminating these activities and materials among European academic institutions and promoting the inclusion of training inspired by our models. In connection with these main objectives, we wanted to strengthen collaboration between European academic institutions on the topics of the project, thus contributing to establishing a new network of researchers working in the field.
In recent decades, cognitive science has deeply changed our understanding of human reasoning and decision-making. As depicted by contemporary cognitive science, the human mind appears, first, as an intuition-driven device, making use of cognitive shortcuts (heuristics) which may easily lead to systematic cognitive distortions (biases); second, as an emotional device, whose apt reasoning and decision making, far from being the product of cool and disembodied cognition, relies on affective mechanisms grounded in the body. This picture is at odds with the methodology and approach still dominant within legal studies. In the mainstream self-narrative, adjudication is still regarded as the realm of dispassionate reason and argumentation, to be approached with the methods of an argumentative analysis, that doesn’t include a systematic and in-depth account of its psychological structure and mechanisms. As a result, they are not aware of the most common biases and distorting factors that lead reasoning and decision-making astray, the personal and environmental conditions that increase the probability of falling prey to such distortions, and the cognitive strategies that may reduce their impact. This is a serious gap in legal education.