No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Iudex non Calculat?
Judges and the Magnitude of Mass Litigation from a Behavioural Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
Mass harm situations caused by corporate misbehaviour, defective products, harmful pharmaceuticals, accidents or environmental disasters nowadays multiply and create new challenges for legal actors and society at large. In its 2013 Recommendations, the EU Commission highlighted that ‘a key role should be given to courts in protecting the rights and interests of all the parties involved in collective redress actions as well as in managing the collective redress actions effectively’. The role of judges therefore turns out to be essential: they are expected to behave as watchdogs scrutinizing the overall admissibility of mass claims, as active case managers ensuring that cases make orderly progress, and as shepherds ensuring that all interests at stake are sufficiently protected. A key issue to be explored remains the influence of the mass context on decision-making which may potentially lead judges to depart from policy makers’ expectations. Interestingly, the mass context is nowadays an element often discarded by judges themselves. Yet, in the context of mass litigation, cases involve and consolidate in one lawsuit hundreds of represented claimants who have suffered a similar harm. The magnitude of the case - that is the number of people involved and/or the size of the loss at stake – is therefore likely to be considerable. Even though judges discuss and exchange with a limited number of protagonists during hearings – e.g. with representative bodies such as associations or leading counsels – judges must preserve the interests of absent parties. Behavioural studies have shed important light on ways groups are perceived by external observers, and on the impact of number and size on information processing. By investigating in greater details the effects associated with the case magnitude on decision-making, this paper aims at providing an alternative viewpoint on the issue of collective redress which will be of particular interest for courts and regulators at both national and European levels.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015
References
1 Cappelletti, M., Le pouvoir des juges, Economica, Paris, 1999, at p. 61; from the same author, ‘Vindicating the Public Interest through the Courts: a Comparativist's Contribution, (25) Buffalo Law Review, 1975, pp. 643-690.Google Scholar
2 Terminology used by the EC Commission in its 2013 Recommendations on Common Principles for Injunctive and Compensatory Collective Redress Mechanism in the Member States Concerning Violations of Rights Granted under Union Law, (21), 2013/396/EU, 11 June 2013.
3 Public Consultation (EC), ‘Towards a Coherent European Approach to Collective Redress’, 2011, http://www.ec.europa.eu/competition/consultations/2011_collective_redress/index_en.html (see specifically Question 23: ‘What role should be given to the judge in collective redress proceedings?’).
4 Recommendation (EC), supra note 3; see also: EU Parliament, Resolution ‘Towards a Coherent Approach to Collective Redress’, 2 February 2012.
5 Biard, A.P. & Visscher, L.T., ‘Judges and Mass Litigation: Revisiting the Judicial Cathedral through Rational Choice Theory and Behavioural Economics’, Aansprakelijkheid, Verzekering & Schade, 2014/7, pp. 39–48 Google Scholar.
6 Le Monde, ‘L’Europe à l’épreuve des tribunaux’, interview with A.Vosskuhle, 1 October 2012, translation from the author (his remark was made in a context different than the one hereafter described).
7 ‘Judges do not count’.
8 Konecni, V.J. V.J., & Ebbesen, E.B., ‘The Mythology of Legal Decision-Making’ (7) International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 1984, pp. 5–18 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
9 Fantino, E. & Stolarz-Fantino, S., ‘Decision-Making: Context Matters’, (69) Behavioural Processes, May 2005, n°2, pp. 165–171 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.; Fantino, E., ‘Context: A Central Concept’, (54) Behavioural Processes, 2001, pp. 95–110 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
10 Adaval, R., ‘Numerosity and Consumer Behavior’, (39) Journal of Consumer Research, 2013, n°5, pp. 11–14 Google Scholar
11 C. Guthrie, J.J. Rachlinksi & A.Wistrich, ‘Context Effects in Judicial Decision Making’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, 2010; Viscusi, K., ‘How Do Judges Think About Risk?’, (1) American Law and Economics Review, 1999, n°1/2, pp. 26–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Reynolds v. Beneficial National Bank, 288 F.3d 277, 279-80 - 7th Cir. 2002 (Judge Posner stating: ‘we and other courts have gone so far as to term the district judge in the settlement phase of a class action suit a fiduciary of the class, who is subject therefore to the high duty of care that the law requires of fiduciaries’).
13 C. Eliacheff & D. Soulez-Lariviere, Le Temps des Victimes, Albin Michel, Paris, 2006, 293 p.
14 Simon, H.A.,‘A Behavioural Model of Rational Choice’, (69) The Quarterly Journal of Economics 1955, p. 99–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon, H.A., ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’, in Models of Man: Social and Rational – Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behaviour on a Social Setting, New York: John Wiley & Sons 1957, p. 241–257 Google Scholar.
15 Posner, R.A., ‘What Do Judges and Justices Maximize? (The Same Thing Everybody Else Does)’, (3) Supreme Court Economic Review 1993, p. 1–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Gulati, G.M. & Bainbridge, S.M., ‘How Do Judges Maximize? (The Same Way Everybody Else Does – Boundedly): Rules of Thumb in Securities Fraud Opinions’, (51) Emory Law Journal, 2002, pp. 51, pp. 83-151Google Scholar.
17 Tsaoussi, A. & Zervogianni, E., ‘Judges as Satisficers : a Law and Economics Perspective on Judicial Liability’, (29) European Journal of Law & Economics 2010, p. 333–357 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Verplanken, B., ‘Need for Cognition and External Information Search: Responses to Time Pressure During Decision-Making’, (27) Journal of Research in Personality, 1993, pp. 238–252 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reviewing the literature on this issue).
19 Faure, M. & Visscher, L., ‘The Role of Experts in Assessing Damages – A Law & Economics Account’, (3) European Journal of Risk Regulation, 2011, pp. 376–396 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sunstein, C.R., Why Societies Need Dissent, Harvard University Press, 2003, 246 p. (at p. 17)Google Scholar.
20 Heuristics are mental conscious or unconscious simplifications or short-cuts aimed at coping with the limited cognitive capacities of the human brain, as well as with the complexity and uncertainty of environments in which individuals evolved. They help select information in order to only focus on a set of key factors that are relevant for decision-making (see notably: D. Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011, 500 p.; Gigerenzer, G. and Gaissmaier, W., ‘Heuristic Decision-Making’, (62) Annual Review of Psychology, 2011, pp. 451–482)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
21 Ulen, T.S & Korobkin, R.B., ‘Law & Behavioural Science: Removing the Rationality Assumption from Law & Economics’, (88) California Law Review, 2000, n°4, pp. 1051–1144 (at p. 1077)Google Scholar.
22 Kahneman, D., Tversky, A. & Slovic, P. (Eds.), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, 1982, 555 p.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Vidmar, N., ‘The Psychology of Trial Judging’, (20) Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2011, pp. 58–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, (reviewing the literature).
24 Gigerenzer, G., ‘Heuristics’, in: Engel, C. and Gigerenzer, G. (Eds.), Heuristics & The Law, Dahlem Workshop Reports, 2006, Dahlem University Press, pp. 17–44 (at p. 28)Google Scholar.
25 Landsman, S. and Rakos, R. F., ‘A Preliminary Inquiry into the Effect of Potentially Biasing Information on Judges and Jurors in Civil Litigation’, (12) Behavioural Sciences & The Law, 1994, pp. 113–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Chortek, M., ‘The Psychology of Unknowing: Inadmissible Evidence in Jury and Bench Trials’, (32) Review of Litigation, 2013, pp. 117–143 Google Scholar.
27 C. Guthrie, J.J. Rachlinski, A.Wistrich, ‘Inside the Judicial Mind‘, (86) Cornell Law Review, May 2001, n°4; C. Guthrie, J.J. Rachlinski and A.Wistrich, ‘Blinking On the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases’, Vanderbilt Law & Economics Research Paper, 2007, n°07-32.
28 B.A. Spellman, ‘On The Supposed Expertise of Judges in Evaluating Evidence’,(157) University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2007.
29 Hamer, J., ‘Sensitive Judges – How to Resolve the Tangle of Legal Decision-Making and Emotion’, (8) Utrecht Law Review, 2012, pp. 189–199 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 J.Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial, Yale, 2008, 276 p. (at p. 17); Gallanis, T.P., ‘Reasonable Doubt and the History of the Criminal Trial, (76) University of Chicago Law Review, 2009, p. 941–963 Google Scholar; Schelling, T., ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’, in: Chase, S.B. (Ed.), Problems in Public Expenditure Analysis, Brooking Institution, Washington D.C., 1968, pp. 127–176 Google Scholar.
31 Maroney, T.A., ‘The Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion’, (99) California Law Review, 2011, pp. 629–682 Google Scholar.
32 T.A. Maroney, idem (observing: ‘the judge came to be seen as the primary figure guarding this realm of rationality, by taming the emotions of litigants, ignoring the emotions of the public, and divesting herself of her own’).
33 Hanoch, Y., ‘Neither an Angel nor an Ant: Emotion as an Aid to Bounded Rationality’, (23) Journal of Economic Psychology, 2002, pp. 1–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Abrams, K. & Keren, H., ‘Who's Afraid of Law and the Emotions?’, (94) Minnesota Law Review, 2010, pp. 1998–2072 Google Scholar; Chin, D., ‘Sentencing: A Role for Empathy’, (160) University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2012, pp. 1561–1584 Google Scholar); Miller, M.K., Greene, E., Dietrich, H., Chamberlain, J. & Singer, J.A., ‘How Emotion Affects the Trial Process’, (92) Judicature, September-October 2008, n°2Google Scholar; Chamberlain, J. & Miller, M.K., ‘Stress in the Courtroom: Call for Research’, (15) Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2008, n°2, pp. 237–250 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bennett, H. & Broe, G.A., ‘Judicial Decision-Making and Neurobiology: The Role of Emotion and the Ventromedial Cortex in Deliberation and Reasoning’, (42) Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, March 2010, n°1, pp. 11–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 B.H. Bornstein and R.L. Wiener, ‘Emotion and the Law: A Field whose Time Has to Come’, in: B.H. Bornstein and R.L. Wiener (Eds), Emotion and the Law, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 2010.
36 Arndt, J. & al., ‘Terror Management in the Courtroom: Exploring the Effects of Mortality Salience on Legal Decision-Making’, (11) Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 2005, n°3, pp. 407–438 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also: Jones, M.B. and Wiener, R.L., ‘Effects of Mortality Salience on Capital Punishment Sentencing Decisions’, (33) Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2011, pp. 167–181 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Rosenblatt, A. & al., ‘Evidence for Terror Management Theory: The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions to Those Who Violate or Uphold Cultural Values’, (57) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1989, n°4, pp. 681–690 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
38 Hamilton, D.L. & Sherman, S.J., ‘Perceiving Persons & Groups’, (103) Psychological Review, 1996, n°2, pp. 336–355 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Susskind, J. & al., ‘Perceiving Individuals and Groups: Expectancies, Dispositional Inferences, and Causal Attributions’, (76) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, n°2, pp. 181–191 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
39 D.L. Hamilton & S.J. Sherman, supra note 38.
40 Idem.
41 Campbell, D.T., ‘Common Fate, Similarity and Other Indices of the Status of Aggregates of Persons as Social Entitites’, (3) Behavioural Sciences, 1958, pp. 14–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Hamilton, D.L., ‘Understanding the Complexities of Group Perception: Broadening the Domain’, (37) European Journal of Social Psychology, 2007, pp. 1077–1101 (here at p. 1087)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 D.T. Campbell, supra note 41, at p. 17.
44 D.L. Hamilton & S.J Sherman, supra note 38.
45 Sherman, S.J. and Percy, E.J., ‘The Psychology of Collective Responsibility: When and Why Collective Entities Are Likely to Be Held Responsible for the Misdeeds of Individual Members’, (137) Journal of Law and Policy, 2011, pp. 137–170 Google Scholar (stressing that ‘the difference between perceptions of individuals and groups virtually disappears when a group is high in perceived entitativity’, at p. 149).
46 Tversky, A. and Redelmeier, R.A., ‘Discrepancy between Medical Decisions for Individuals Patients and for Groups’, (322) The New England Journal of Medicine, 1990, pp. 1162–1165 Google Scholar.
47 Noteworthy, subsequent experiments conducted by Dekay and his team failed to replicate these findings, see: Dekay, M.L. & al., ‘Further Explorations of Medical Decisions for Individuals and For Groups’, (20) Medical Decision-Making, 2000, pp. 39–44 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
48 A.E. Tenbrunsel & al., ‘Unethical behaviour directed toward group versus individuals: The Role of Target Type In Promoting Misrepresentation’, unpublished manuscript (cited in: Kogut, T. and Ritov, I., ‘The Singularity Effect of Identified Victims in Separate and Joint Evaluations’, (97) Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 200, pp. 106–116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Norgdren, L.F. and Mc Donnell, M.-H., The Scope-Severity Paradox: Why Doing More Harm is Judged to Be Less Harmful’, (2) Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011, pp. 97–102 (at p. 100)Google Scholar.
50 Sah, S. and Loewenstein, G., ‘More Affected = More Neglected: Amplification Bias in Advice to the Unidentified and Many’, (3) Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2012, pp. 365–372 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Lickel, B. & al., ‘Varieties of Groups and the Perception of Group Entitativity’,(78) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, pp. 223–246 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
52 S.J. Sherman & E.J. Percy, supra note 45 (observing on a broader level that ‘all groups can be characterized as having some degree of entitativity, on a continuum from very low -heterogeneous, little connection between group members- to very high - strong group level impression, high cohesiveness among group members’).
53 Yeazell, S.C., ‘Collective Litigation as Collective Action’, University of Illinois Law Review, 1989, pp. 43–68 Google Scholar.
54 Aggregate is defined as a ‘composite’, ‘a collection of items that are gathered together to form a total quantity’.
55 Interestingly, in Wal-Mart, judges also pointed out the the lack of ‘glue’ holding plaintiffs’ claims together (Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, 564 US, 2011)
56 Smith, R.W. & al., ‘More for the Many: The Influence of Entitativity on Charitable Giving’, (39) Journal of Consumer Research, 2013, pp. 961–976 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 Idem.
58 Idem.
59 Crawford, M. & al., ‘Perceived Entitativity, Stereotype Formation, and the Interchangeability of Group Members’,(83) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002, n°5, pp. 1076–1094 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
60 Wilder, D.A., ‘Perceiving Persons as a Group: Effects on Attributions of Causality and Beliefs’, (41) Social Psychology, 1978, n°1, pp. 13–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Pickett, C.L., ‘The Effects of Entitativity Beliefs on Implicit Comparisons between Group Members’, (27) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2001, pp. 515–525 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Picket, C.L. & Perrott, D.A., ‘Shall I Compare Thee? Perceived Entitativity and Ease of Comparison’, (40) Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2004, pp. 283–289 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Sindell v. Abbot Laboratories, 26 Cal 3d 588 (1980) 607 P. 2d 924 (hereafter ‘Sindell’).
64 O’ Laughlin, M.J. & Malle, B.F., ‘How Do Explain Actions Performed by Groups and Individuals’, (82) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002, pp. 33–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 Newheiser, A.-K., Awaoka, T.S & Dovidio, J.F, ‘Why Do We Punish Groups ? High Entitativity Promotes Moral Suspicion’, (48) Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2012, pp. 931–936 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Idem.
67 Lickel, B. & al., ‘The Roles of Entitativity and Essentiality in Judgements of Collective Responsibility’, (9) Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2006, pp. 43–61 Google Scholar (As the authors highlight, the term collective responsibility more precisely refers to situations where perceivers ‘assign blame to individuals who were not direct causal agent of negative events, but do share a social association with the wrongdoer’).
68 Lickel, B. & al., ‘Vicarious Retributions: The Role of Collective Blame in Intergroup Aggression’, (10) Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2006, pp. 372–390 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S.J. Sherman and E.J. Percy, supra note 44, at p. 153.
69 Sindell, supra note 63.
70 The literature on market share liability is extensive. From an example in the American literature, see Murray, R.P., Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories: A Market Share Approach to DES Causation’, (69) California Law Review, 1981, pp. 1079–1203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example in the French legal literature, see: J.-S. Borghetti, ‘Responsabilité du fait du DES: En route vers la Market Share Liability’, Revue des Contrats, January 2010, No1, p. 90.
71 Sindell, supra note 63.
72 ‘Selected Item from the FDA Bulletin : Diethylstilboestrol contraindicated in pregnancy: Drug's Use Linked to Adenocarcinoma in the Offspring, California Medicine – The Western Journal of Medicine, November 1971, p. 85
73 S.C. Yeazell, supra note 53.
74 J.-S. Borghetti, supra note 70.
75 F. G’Sell-Macrez., ‘La Preuve du lien de causalité : comparaisons franco-américaines à propos des arrêts Distilbène’, Les Petites Affiches, 29 Octobre 2010, p. 6.
76 Cass.civ. 1e, 24 September 2009, pourvois n°08-10081 and n°08-16305.
77 H. Lecuyer, ‘En Route Vers la Market Share Liability ? Quelles suites à la Jurisprudence relative à la responsabilité du fait du DES ?, Petites Affiches, 22 mai 2012, p. 3.
78 Paris Court of Appeal, 26 October 2012, n°10/18297; G'Sell, F., ‘DES Daughters Cases: Cour de Cassation 24 September 2009 and 24 January 2010 and CA Paris 26 October 2012’, (2) European Review of Private Law, 2013, pp. 587–590 Google Scholar.
79 Also developed in: A.P. Biard and L.T. Visscher, supra note 5.
80 D.J. Sheskin, ‘Outlier’, in: N.J.Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Research Design, 2010.
81 Horowitz, I.A., Brolly, I. and Forster Lee, L., ‘Effects of Trial Complexity on Decision-Making’, (81) Journal of Applied Psychology, 1996, n°6, pp. 757–768 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
82 Rothbart, M. & al., ‘From Individual to Group Impressions: Availability Heuristics in Stereotype Formation’,(14) Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978, n°3, pp. 237–255 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Horowitz, I.A. and Bordens, K.S., ‘The Limits of Sampling and Consolidation in Mass Tort Trials: Justice Improved or Justice Altered?’, (22) Law & Psychology Review, 1998, p. 43–66 Google Scholar.
84 Leon, M., Oden, G.C. and Anderson, N.H., ‘Functional Measurement of Social Values’, (27) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, n°3, pp. 301–310 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
85 Horowitz, I.A. and Bordens, K.S., ‘The Effects of Outlier Presence, Plaintiff Population Size, & Aggregation of Plaintiffs on Simulated Civil Jury Decisions’, (12) Law & Human Behaviour, 1988, n°3, pp. 209–229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Idem
87 Ratliff, J., ‘Special Master's Report in Cimino v. Raymark Industries Inc.’, (10) The Review of Litigation, 1991, pp. 521–546 Google Scholar.
88 Idem (emphasis added)
89 Slovic, P. & al,, ‘Rational Actors or Rational Fools: Implications of the Affect Heuristic for Behavioural Economics’, (31) Journal of Socio-Economics, 2002, pp. 329–342 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slovic, P. & al., ‘The Affect Heuristic’, (177) European Journal of Operational Research, 2007, pp. 1333–1352 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 Alhakami, A.S. and Slovic, P., ‘A Psychological Study of the Inverse Relationship Between Perceived Risk and Perceived Benefit’, (14) Risk Analysis, 1994, pp. 1085–1096 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; see also Slovic, P. & al. (‘Rational Actors or Rational Fools: Implications of the Affect Heuristic for Behavioural Economics’, (31) Journal of Socio-Economics, 2002, pp. 329–342 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (highlighting that ‘people base their judgements of an activity or a technology not only on what they think about it but also on what they feel about it’, at p. 333).
91 O'Neill, K., ‘Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in The Courts – Book Review’, (15) Review of Law and Social Change, 1986-1987, pp. 415–428 Google Scholar
92 K. O’Neill, idem. Judge Weinstein for instance insisted in keeping the government as a party to the litigation even though it had been dismissed by the preceding judge and even though a majority of litigants did not want to sue the government.as pointed out by the author, judge Weinstein fiercely ‘believed that the government had neglected the veterans and was determined to force it to participate in a benefit program for them’. Additionally, Novey observed that judge Weinstein's great involvement in the lawsuit was fiercely criticized by many US veterans who considered that the final settlement was ‘almost entirely his own construction’ (see Novey, L.B. ‘Collective Judicial Management of Mass Toxic Tort Controversies: Lessons and IssuesFrom the Agent Orange Litigation’, (27) Social Science & Medicine, 1988, n°10, pp. 1071–1084 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed).
93 Pachur, T. & al., ‘How Do People Judge Risks: Availability Heuristic, Affect Heuristic or Both?’, (18) Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2012, pp. 314–330 Google ScholarPubMed.
94 Sunstein, C.R. & Kuran, T., ‘Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation’, (51) Stanford Law Review, 1999, pp. 683–768 Google Scholar (taking as example the Love Canal Affair where the starting point appeared to be ‘frightening stories in the Niagara Falls Gazette’, at p. 692).
95 Bailis, D.S. & Mc Coun, R.J., ‘Estimating Liability Risks With the Media as Your Guide: A Content Analysis of Media Coverage of Tort Litigation’, (20) Law and Human Behaviour, 1996, n°4, pp. 419–429 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
96 Idem, at p. 427.
97 Sah, S. & Loewenstein, G., ‘More Affected=More Neglected: Amplification Bias in Advice to the Unidentified and Many’, (3) Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2012, pp. 365–372 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
98 Cabraser, E.J., ‘The Essentials of Democratic Mass Litigation’, (45) Columbia Journal of Law & Society, 2012, pp. 499–523 Google Scholar (emphasis added).
99 Lahav, A.D., ‘The Law and Large Numbers: Preserving Adjudication in Complex Litigation’, (59) Florida LawReview, pp. 383–436 Google Scholar (at p. 384, emphasis added).
100 Hensler, D., ‘Justice for the Masses? Aggregate Litigation & its Alternatives’, (143) Daedalus, summer 2014, n°3, pp. 73–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (emphasis added).
101 See E.J.Cabraser, supra note 99 (highlighting: ‘the function of the court as a fiduciary is a hallmark of formal class action litigation and mass litigation deemed quasi class actions are treated as if they are class actions, from the standpoint of protecting the rights and dignity of an otherwise depersonalized mass of plaintiffs/claimants’, at p. 521).
102 T.C. Schelling, supra note 30.
103 R. Nisbett and L. Ross, Human Inferences: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgement, Prentice Hall, 1980, 334 p. (here p. 43-620, ‘assigning weights to data: the “vividness criterion”’).
104 Jenni, K.E. and Loewenstein, G., ‘Explaining the Identifiable Victim Effect’, (14) Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1997, pp. 235–257 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
105 Slovic, P., ‘If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act: Psychic Numbing and Genocide’, (2) Judgement and Decision-Making, 2007, n°2, pp. 79–95 Google Scholar (highlighting that such a tendency explains the lack of sensitivity associated with mass murders like genocide).
106 Kahneman, D., Ritov, I. & Schkade, D., ‘Economic Preferences or Attitudes Expressions? An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues, (1) Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1999, pp. 203–235 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
107 W.H. Desvousges & al., ‘Measuring Natural Resource Damages with Contingent Valuation: Tests of Validity and Reliability’, in: J.A. Hausman (Ed.), Contingent Evaluation: A Critical Assessment, pp. 91-164.
108 Slovic, P. & al., ‘Rational Actors or Rational Fools: Implications of the Affect Heuristic for Behavioural Economics’, (31) Journal of Socio-Economics, 2002, pp. 329–342 (at p. 337)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
109 Small, D.A. & Loewenstein, G., ‘Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability’, (26) Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2003, pp. 5–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (in their experimental design, the main difference between identified and unidentified individuals was indeed that in one scenario recipients were already determined when subjects were asked to take their decision, whereas in the other scenario recipients had still to be identified. The authors finally observed that ‘if such a weak form of identifiability can produce such a dramatic difference in altruistic behaviour it seems likely that variations of identifiability will produce even more dramatic effects in naturalistic situations in which, for example, one usually does obtain at least some information about identifiable victims’ – emphasis added, at p. 11).
110 Kogut, T. & Ritov, I., ‘The Identified Victim Effect: An Identified Group or Just a Single Individual?’, (18) Journal of Behavioural Decision-Making, 2005, pp. 157–167 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
111 Small, D.A. & Loewenstein, G., ‘The Devil You Know: The Effects of Identifiability on Punishments’, (18) Journal of Behavioural Decision-Making, 2005, pp. 311–318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
112 R.Nisbett & L.Ross, supra note 103, at p. 56.
113 R. Hamill , T.D. Wilson & R.E. Nisbett, Ignoring Sample Bias: Inferences about collectivities from Atypical cases, unpublished manuscript, university of Michigan, 1979 (the content and conclusions of this experiment was reported in Nisbett and Ross, supra note 104, at p. 57-58).
114 Nordgren, L.F. & Mc Donnell, M.-H., ‘The Scope-Severity Paradox: Why Doing More Harm is Judged to Be Less Harmful’, (2) Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011, pp. 97–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115 Idem, at p. 101.
116 Idem.
117 In several mass proceedings, judges sit en banc. For instance, in High Courts of First Instance (tribunal de grande instance), French judges usually sit in panel. They will also do so in the framework of the new group action procedure ('action de groupe’) recently adopted.
118 Bartels, B.L., ‘Top-Down and Bottom-Up Models of Judicial Reasoning’, in: Klein, D. and Mitchell, G. (ed.), The Psychology of Judicial Decision Making, Oxford University Press, 2010 Google Scholar (observing: ‘the possibility of having to justify one's decision to another person or group leads to more careful scrutinizing of the attributes and information specific to the context, and less of a reliance on the potentially biasing predisposition one brings to the case’, at p. 45).
119 Bornstein, G. & Yaniv, I., ‘Individual and Group Behaviour in the Ultimatum Game: Are Groups More ‘Rational’ Players?’, (1) Experimental Economics, 1998, pp. 101–108 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
120 Laughlin, P.R. & Carey, H.R., ‘Groups Perform Better Than The Best Individuals on Letters-to-Numbers Problems: Effects of Induced Strategies’, (15) Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2012, pp. 231–242 Google Scholar; Laughlin, P.R., Hatch, E.C., Silver, J.S. and Boh, L., ‘Groups Perform Better than the Best Individuals on Letters-to-Numbers Problems: Effects of Group Size’, (90) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006, n°4, pp. 644–651 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
121 Charness, G. & Sutter, M., ‘Groups Make Better Self-Interested Decisions’, (26) Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2012, n°3, pp. 157–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
122 D.Kahneman, supra note 22.
123 Kerr, N.L., Kramer, G.P. & Mc Coun, R.J., ‘Bias in Judgment: Comparing Individuals and Groups’, (103) Psychological Review, 1996, n.4, pp. 687–719 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (highlighting ‘there can be no simple answer to the question “which is more biased, individuals or groups”’, at p. 715).
124 Ten Velden, F.S. & De Dreu, C.K.W., ‘Groups As Motivated Information Processors’, in: Giard, R.W.M. (Ed.), Judicial Decision Making in Civil Law – Determinants, Dynamics and Delusions, Eleven International Publishing, 2012, 118 p.Google Scholar
125 Eisenberg, T., Fisher, T. & Rosen–Zvi, I.‚ ‘Group Decision Making on Appellate Panels: Presiding Justice and Opinion Justice Influence in the Israel Supreme Court’, (19) Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 2013, n°3, p. 282–296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
126 F.S. Ten Velden & C.K.W. De Dreu, supra note 124.
127 Ratliff, J., ‘Special Master's Report in Cimino v. Raymark Industries Inc.’, (10) The Review of Litigation, 1991, pp. 521–546 Google Scholar.
128 Ford, R.T., ‘Beyond Good and Evil in Civil Rights Law: The Case of Wal-Mart v. Dukes’, (32) Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labour Law, 2011, pp. 513–529 Google Scholar.
129 Small, D.A., Loewenstein, G. & Slovic, P., ‘Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims’, (102) Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 2007, pp. 143–153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.