Throughout the second half of the 20th century, advances in empirical sciences exposed the limitations of various conceptions of human behaviour that had previously been adopted by law.
This new body of knowledge, derived from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and biology, calls on the law to thoroughly re-evaluate its behavioural foundations, without which its regulatory function will lose its justification and capacity for intervention and effective behavioural change.
In this work, behavioural economics is presented and critically analysed in this precise context of re-evaluating behavioural assumptions by law. Here, it emerges as a discipline allied with legal science, both for the scientific evidence it provides and for the pragmatic and consequentialist perspective with which it transforms it into inputs capable of assisting in the construction of public policies in the most diverse areas of collective life.
