Law and Human Evolution

About this work

What would become of us without laws? Legal theory takes order for granted and rarely asks what obeying rules does to the people who obey them. Ricardo Rivero Ortega puts forward a bold hypothesis: law changes minds. By shaping how we decide, cooperate and live together, our laws and systems of justice leave a cognitive and epigenetic mark on regulated societies, and have helped to make us human.

Drawing on evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics and the history of legal institutions, the book examines four pillars of our legal civilization: freedom, with the autonomy of the will and the limits of prohibition, control and paternalistic manipulation; procedure, against bounded rationality and the temptation of elites to decide on behalf of the people; contract, with communication, trust, altruism and reciprocity; and dissent, with the control of power and the protection of minorities. The result is a humanist defense of law.

Translated from the Spanish original, ¿Para qué sirve el Derecho? Also available in Brazilian Portuguese: Direito e Evolução Humana.

Who it is for. For readers of legal philosophy and jurisprudence, law and economics, and the evolutionary study of human behavior.