Precommitments: the necessary heuristics for judicial decision

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the characterization of democratic precommitments, through the model proposed by Jeremy Waldron, as heuristics that establish decision-making standards used in court judgements, to ensure a better constitutional-democratic quality of judicial decisions. The problem involves an approach of Kahneman's theoretical categories. This study uses the bibliographic analysis about law and psychology, for the purpose of qualitative study about the relations between precommitments and heuristics. The conclusion demonstrates the opportunity to enhance the judicial decisions by controlling the heuristics and biases of the human judge through heuristics derived from democratic precommitments, institutionally designed as a constitutional architecture of choices. In this scenario, the recognition of the heuristic characteristic of precommitments presents a vision (without denying the achievements of the most applied theoretical models) that focuses on the natural way of structuring human thought, which impacts the theory of judicial decision.