TALLAHASSEE—Leading national scholars in the fields of law and the behavioral sciences will participate in a symposium titled: “The Behavioral Analysis of Legal Institutions, Possibilities, Limitations and New Directions.” The symposium will be held March 26-27 at the Florida State University College of Law, and is open to the public, and will be of particular interest to members of the legal and behavioral sciences communities. 

Discussions will center on judgments and decisions that occur within legally important institutional settings. Critical analyses of existing empirical research on the behavior of legal institutions and original empirical research that extends an understanding of how legal institutions affect behavior will be presented. 

The conference will provide an opportunity to take stock of where the behavioral study of legal institutions stands, to discuss why the legal system should pay greater—or less—attention to this research, and to consider future directions for this field of study. 

Separate panels will cover judicial decision-making, jury decision-making, administrative decision-making, and corporate and commercial decision-making. In addition to participants from the FSU College of Law, panelists will include experts in their fields from Cornell Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington University School of Law, the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Policy and Boalt Hall School of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School and Northwestern University School of Law, among others. 

Philip Tetlock, Ph.D., chair of the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group at Haas School of Business, University of California-Berkeley, will be the keynote speaker. He is a leading behavioral decision theorist whose studies on judgment and decision-making behavior within organizations include seminal research on accountability systems and the rationality of judgment and choice. Tetlock has received the Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Political Psychology from the International Society of Political Psychology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research and the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Social Psychology from the American Psychological Association in 1986. 

The registration fee is $25 and includes lunch on March 26. Florida CLE credit is available. Checks should be made payable to the FSU College of Law. To register, contact Stephanie Williams, Associate Dean for Administration, at 850-644-3301, or email, swilliam@law.fsu.edu. For further information, visit the symposium web site at www.law.fsu.edu or e-mail Professor Gregory Mitchell at gmitchel@law.fsu.edu.