TITLE:
Regulatory Law and Logic in Decision-Making: An Investigation into Limited Rationality in A Causa Secreta of Machado de Assis
AUTHORS:
Henrique Ribeiro Cardoso, Ilton Garcia da Costa, Arnaldo de Aguiar Machado Júnior, André Felipe Santos de Souza
KEYWORDS:
Regulatory Law, Jusliterature, Behavioral Economics, Bounded Rationality
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.15 No.3,
September
23,
2024
ABSTRACT: This article addresses the intersection between Regulatory Law, Economics and Literature, revealing the complexity of regulatory decisions. Regulatory Law, with its norms and principles, seeks to balance public and private interests, allowing public agents to adjust norms to specific cases, although this may introduce extralegal biases. Behavioral economics, highlighted by scholars such as Daniel Kahneman and Cass Sunstein, criticizes limited rationality in decisions, influenced by cognitive and emotional distortions. Sunstein’s choice architecture demonstrates how structuring options can significantly shape your decisions. At the same time, literature, represented by Machado de Assis in A Causa Secreta, explores the human psyche and the hidden motivations of behavior. Assis’s work illustrates how perceptions and decisions can be manipulated, offering a rich metaphor for the analysis of bounded rationality. Fortunato, the central character, exemplifies human duplicity and irrationality, reflecting the challenges faced by social regulators. In this interdisciplinary context, there is a need for robust mechanisms to mitigate biases and extralegal influences in regulatory decisions. Literature, therefore, is a crucial tool for understanding the nuances of human rationality, supplementing economic and legal approaches. Assis’s work, especially, illuminates the recesses of the human mind, promoting a legal hermeneutics that is more aware of the complexities of human nature. Thus, a multidisciplinary analysis contributes to the development of fair and efficient regulatory mechanisms, recognizing the limitations inherent to human reason.