Arthur Dyevre, PhD

In a new study with Ahmad Shahvaroughi and Henry Otgaar we investigate the relationship between mood and the formation of false autobiographical memories. Using an innovative blind implantation method, the research reveals that while mood doesn’t significantly affect false memory creation, negative events are much more likely to result in false memories than positive ones. False beliefs and memories were implanted in 6% to 35% of participants. Negative events led to significantly higher false memory formation than positive ones. This research underscores the importance of careful handling of memory in therapeutic settings to avoid implanting false traumatic memories.
Read the full paper on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4974308 and ResearchGate:

I rarely write about regulatory questions and I am putting the question in deliberatively provocative terms. So let me be clear: I firmly believe that privacy and AI regulations are necessary. The principles underpinning EU regulations – from the GDPR to the EU AI Act – are fundamentally sound. But the problem I want to point out here has less to do with the legislation itself and more with what has been developing around it and the perverse asymmetries it has been generating for European research and, if we are to believe the Draghi Report, European small and medium businesses.

Most of these regulations were designed to keep Big Tech — predominantly US companies — in check. These firms have been voraciously collecting data from European citizens while deploying generative AI applications and popular chatbots. Yet the same stringent rules apply with equal force to scientific research, SMEs and even charities. Complying with these regulations is demanding and often costly and time-consuming. And this is where we run into the first asymmetry. Big Tech can rely on armies of top-notch lawyers who don’t only understand the law, but also the technology and who excel at risk evaluation – although they only represent a small overhead spread over a giant business operation. Academic researchers and small business don’t enjoy such legal resources. Often they struggle to comply or to get GDPR-approval. Jurists on university bodies in charge of approving ethical and GDPR-compliance can be surprisingly unfamiliar with protocols, data-collection platforms and technologies now used in advanced research.

But this would not be so bad if these regulations had not spurred the emergence of a regulatory culture promoted by a large EU commentariat excessively focused on the dangers and threats associated with new technologies. Privacy is invoked at every turn, often legitimately, but sometimes in more questionable ways. With many adverse consequences for European scientists. Conducting legal AI research in Europe is very hard, when not outright impossible, because many judiciaries hide behind the GDPR to block access to the large corpora of decisions researchers need. The fear of facing complaints have made universities risk averse. And then you have the young, inexperienced jurist on the board of ethics or working for the local regulator who has persuaded himself that the modest research proposal he is asked to review must be the next Cambridge Analytica.

It is not rare for even a very-low risk scientific proposal to take weeks of wrangling to get approved. I have seen instances where researchers eventually had to ask anonymous participants to consent three times to data collection. Once to join the online platform that recruited them in the UK. Then a second time to get their GDPR consent. And, finally, a third time, because they are also supposed to give their ethical consent to data collection (a nuance surely lost on 99.9% of participants).

The problem is not just that researchers end up devoting inordinate amounts of time to convince university reviewers that their work is compliant (which comes on top of all the academic bureaucracy – reporting, time-sheeting, submitting data management plans – that keeps inflating and keeps distracting scientists from the actual research). To avert problems with finicky reviewers, researchers often choose to do less. Don’t collect demographics if they are not strictly necessary for the study or if it is likely to delay approval! Master students interested in conducting experiments involving human participants face the real risk that GDPR and ethical review will prevent them from graduating in timely fashion.

There are no empirical studies of this phenomenon. But I do see scientific areas – such as psychological and behavioural studies – where this is clearly hurting European research. Because studies come with fewer covariates, there is less room for exploratory analysis and the generation of new hypotheses. The same may be occurring in medical research. As studies collect less information about patient characteristics, the resulting data will inevitably offer fewer possibilities to explore and detect interaction effects or understand rare complications.

Meanwhile, Big Tech and multinationals are moving and processing tons of data, often in ways that raise red flags, but as part of complex and opaque business operations that tend to elude the attention of regulators. Discussing with business people, I am often astonished at what Big Tech and multinationals dare to do with data. Which points to another asymmetry: the regulations we are talking about here are much easier to enforce on academics, small charities and companies running far less complex operations. The popularity of their apps and the attending network effects afford Big Tech giants a huge bargaining chip to force you and me to hand them over our data. Academics, obviously, don’t have this leverage, but can still feel at the mercy of frivolous accusations of breaching privacy rights.

The fixation on dangers and threats, some phantasmagorical (e.g. people are going to commit suicide if we let them freely talk to LLM-based chatboxes as a petition circulating in Belgium suggested last year), in the European regulatory bubble has overshadowed the need for more discussion on plain enforcement and the compliance and enforcements asymmetries which are hurting Europe’s research and long term economic prosperity.

What is the solution? What we should try to do first is to change the culture and mindset that have developed on and around the legislation, rather than tinkering with the legislation itself. Let prioritize enforcement and the real risks. And make the lives of European scientists and researchers easier and more productive!

I am thrilled to announce the publication today of my book, “La décision juridictionnelle: Introduction à la théorie et à l’empirie du droit,” with French publisher Lefebvre Dalloz.

Synthesizing theoretical contributions from behavioral psychology, empirical legal analysis, and even linguistics, this book examines the multifarious factors modulating judicial decision-making. Besides ideology, gender, and cognitive biases, the book considers the often overlooked role of factors such as workload, litigation dynamics, and the broder political environment in which judges operate. Driven by the constant concern to relate theory and empirical evidence, its argument is illustrated with a rich variety of examples: the strategic construction of a directive by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the ideological orientation of judges sitting on the European Court of Human Rights, evidence of susceptibility to various biases from vignette experiments conducted with professional magistrates, and so on.

If you read French, you can order the book (EUR 39) here:

LGDJ: https://www.lgdj.fr/la-decision-juridictionnelle-9782247233281.html

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d%C3%A9cision-juridictionnelle-Introduction-th%C3%A9orie-lempirie/dp/2247233287/ref=sr_1_5?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9WTb4lQiYTusEYW-u3Y1uGrW124NMEmkQIpnwT5NwNiMkcYWU4d8ypqwN8bHy7nNF1xllS_b2Bqb7HWZXgRq_w.UPX4r_Ywgdn1eDZ5d7j3UEZtuBU-M6ahx5Skt_bzC1Y&dib_tag=se&qid=1714645404&refinements=p_27%3AArthur+Dyevre&s=books&sr=1-5

Fnac: https://www.fr.fnac.be/a19616165/Arthur-Dyevre-La-decision-juridictionnelle-Introduction-a-la-theorie-et-a-l-empirie-du-droit

I’m’re thrilled to share our latest research paper now available on SSRN “Law School Training and the Demand for Specialized Law Graduates: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” (with Aurélie Meeus and Wout Vandermeulen). Our study examines the real-world impact of curriculum specialization on the employability of law graduates.
Our research involved a field experiment applying a crossover design with 132 Belgian law firms to understand how specializations in Economic/Business Law and Public Law influence job prospects. Our findings reveal nuanced insights:

• Overall, there is only a mild general preference for graduates with specialization in Economic/Business Law.
• Economic/Business Law specializations enhance attractiveness to a small subset of firms, suggesting alignment with specific industry demands.
• Read the full study here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4808391 to explore how these insights might reshape the approach to legal education and specialization.

How does a collective of judges come to a common decision? A fairly good approximation is the Median Voter Theorem, which predicts that the majority decision will reflect the position of the median judge. According to my recently released Working Paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4687112), the median judge on the ICJ has been shifting towards more pro-Western positions in recent years, with French (Abraham), Ugandan (Sebutinde) and Moroccan (Bennouna) judges assigned the highest probability of acting as median. As the world awaits the announcement of the Court’s interim ruling, these findings suggest a tighter outcome than in the Israeli Wall advisory opinion. 

The only International Court of Justice precedent involving Israel is its 2004 advisory opinion on the “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. Looking at how the mode presented in a fresh Working Paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4687112) fits this case, what is most striking is that it was NOT a polarising issue. Instead, all judges, except the US one, came out against Israel. A pattern of isolation similar to that observed in other UN institutions. The correlation with latent support for the Western-led international order — the main geopolitical cleavage on the Court — is also weak.

The embrace of empirical legal studies, a trend that has transformed legal scholarship in the United States and Israel, is now gaining significant traction worldwide. This shift is particularly evident in the study of constitutional rights, where traditional normative and theoretical approaches are being supplemented, and at times challenged, by empirical methods. The trend is not confined to any one region but is a part of a broader, global movement in the legal academy.

Areas like environmental law clearly demonstrate the value of empirical methods. Here, the impact of legislation is directly observable and quantifiable, from emission reductions to improvements in wildlife diversity. This measurable approach is crucial, offering a concrete assessment of policy efficacy that complements normative legal discussions.

The Complex World of Constitutional Rights Law

In contrast, constitutional rights law presents unique challenges for empirical analysis. The nature of rights, varying widely across different times and jurisdictions, and the often aspirational language used in legal provisions, adds layers of complexity to empirical study. How can the effectiveness of constitutional rights be measured in tangible terms?

Despite these hurdles, recent empirical studies have made significant inroads. Starting in the late 1990s, researchers began examining the impact of international human rights treaties, navigating through complex methodological landscapes. This marked the beginning of a challenging yet transformative journey in applying quantitative methods to constitutional rights law.

“How Constitutional Rights Matter”: A Seminal Contribution

In this context, the monograph How Constitutional Rights Matter (OUP, 2020) by Adam Chilton and Mila Versteeg, which I reviewed for the European Constitutional Law Review, stands as a landmark. This work not only proves the feasibility of empirical methods in the realm of constitutional rights but also sheds light on how these methods can enhance our understanding of the actual impact of constitutional rights globally. By offering quantifiable insights into the effect of constitutional rights provisions on rights violations, it challenges the long-held skepticism towards empirical legal studies.

How Constitutional Rights Matter is part of a broad empirical turn in comparative constitutional law addressing the diffusion of constitutional practices, institutions and rights. Some of the accumulated work has come in the form of articles in law and social science journals. Some has come in the form of monographs. The Endurance of National Constitutions by Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg and James Melton, drawing on the most comprehensive comparative law database ever built, has a been a major milestone, ushering in a decade of increasingly ambitious empirical work. Impressive as it was at the time, covering constitutional events worldwide over two centuries, The Endurance of Constitutions also suffered from methodological weaknesses, although these appeared only in retrospect as the credibility revolution spread to empirical comparative law. With its comprehensive mixed-method treatment, How Constitutional Rights Matter certainly sets the methodological bar higher and will define the standard against which empirical constitutional law will be assessed in the years to come.

Human rights revolutions are fought in poetry. But understanding what bills of rights are able to achieve requires a sober mind and lucid prose. Currently, How Constitutional Rights Matter is the most accomplished monograph on the reality of constitutional rights.

I just dropped an article in European Politics and Society titled “EU Judicial Behaviour Research: A Look Back and a Look Ahead,” about European Union courts have been studied over the last 30 years.

We’ve learned a ton about the Court of Justice and how it works with local courts and people in court cases. But it is important to point out the not-so-great parts:

1. Parochial tendency: Turns out, this research field has been rather stuck in its own bubble, not really using new theories from other places and literatures.
2. Old School Methods: Methodology is often outdated and not really keeping up with how we need to prove things — not least causation — in research today.
3. Data, Where You At?: There’s also this issue of not having data, especially on what national courts are up to when they’re not dealing with the big EU Court within the preliminary ruling procedure.

Game Plan for the Future

I suggest some ideas to bring the field forward:

• Mixing Theories: Researchers should borrow more from judicial behaviour research in other settings, especially theoretical insights. This could really help the field.
• Getting Smarter Research Designs: Time to get creative and use experimental and quasi-experimental methods to make empirical findings more credible.
• Tech to the Rescue: It’s time to embrace new tech, webcrawling and Natural Language Processing (NLP) — which have been making great strides — to dig up new info and insights at scale.

In short, it’s a call to action for shaking things up in EU judicial research.

Does fasting during Ramadan influence the decisions of Muslim judges? I was interviewed by Belgian newspaper De Standaard about a study just published in Nature Human Behaviour.