Tag: legislation

Episode 51: Joining the Boring Revolution with Indy Johar

November 24, 2022 legaldesignpodcast Uncategorized 0 Comments
Indy Johar,

This week we meet with Indy Johar from Dark Matter Labs to discuss why and how our systems of governance should be reformed and why we need all professionals, including lawyers, joining this “Boring revolution”.  We, of course, look things from the legal (design) perspective so we concentrate on what role (legal) design has in making our societies fit for the needs of the 21st Century.

Global crises will become more frequent in the future, due to climate change escalating other phenomena, we need to create new, agile ways to manage unpredictable force majeure type of events. There might be situations where governments have only a few hours to react in order to protect their citizens, or just 24 hours to pass a new law. The new reality will demand us to change also the way we design regulation – or what we think a regulation is in the first place. There is a tremendous need for law to change and the required work might seem overwhelming, but Indy puts us back on track and reminds us that there are examples of gigantic systemic change.

We also cover some big topics like democracy and talk about the need for creating better legal concepts and models, such as property right or legal personhood, to transform governance.

Indy Johar is focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition – specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures.

Indy is co-founder of darkmatterlabs.org and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00 – https://www.architecture00.net, a founding director of open systems lab – https://www.opensystemslab.io (digitising planning), seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) – https://www.wikihouse.cc  and Open Desk (open source furniture company) https://www.opendesk.cc.

Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub https://bloxhub.org (Denmark Copenhagen) – the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization and was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University.  He was also Studio Master at the Architectural Association – 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member  2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20. He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School. 

Most recently, he was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022.

4. Episode: Behavioral Insights into Law with David Tannenbaum

March 21, 2021 legaldesignpodcast Uncategorized 0 Comments
David Tannenbaum

In this episode Nina and Henna talk about nudging and its possibilities and pitfalls in legal design with David Tannenbaum, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business.

Where law seeks to influence human behavior by setting obligations, legal design aims to make those obligations easier to understand and follow by using human centric design methods. Sometimes these methods can encompass behaviorally informed “nudges”. In behavioral economics nudges are defined as any kind of interventions in the physical or social environment that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. So to say, nudges make certain decisions easier, yet without limiting one’s freedom of choice. To put it simply, nudging means guiding people to make better choices by modifying the environment and choice architecture. A fitness app nudges with activity notifications, so does a car navigator showing the best route options.

Nudging, however, also has a reputation of being a psychological trick used in product marketing: those chocolate bars placed next to a cash register at your grocery store aren’t there just by random. But should legal products such as contracts and court documents use nudging too? Or do they nudge already?

Nudging just might be one of the misunderstood concepts and rarely used intentionally in the legal world. Years ago, when Henna wanted to attend a conference about nudging, her manager at that time thought it was a self help course about managing one’s own personal life that had nothing to do with law and didn’t let her attend the event. However, after Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein published their book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness in 2008 nudging has gained public awareness and has also become a popular alternative to traditional regulation in various governments and administrations around the world, especially in angosaxon jurisdictions.

Despite the controversial reputation nudging may have, it is good to remember that our environment influences us anyway.  As our guest David reminds, “every day, all the time, everywhere you go, there’s nudging going on”. Nudging is not a legal concept, but as lawyers and legal designers still influence the decisions of their clients and peers, it is better to be aware of the power of nudge and learn to use it ethically and wisely.

David Tannenbaum is an assistant professor in the department of management at the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business. His research focuses on decision making under uncertainty, and its applications to public policy. Link to David Tannenbaum’s website: https://davetannenbaum.github.io