Law Commons^™

Code, Nudge, Or Notice?, Ryan Calo

Articles

Regulators are increasingly turning to means other than law to influence citizen behavior. This Essay compares three methods that have particularly captured the imagination of scholars and officials in recent years. Much has been written about each method in isolation. This Essay considers them together for the first time in order to generate a novel normative insight about the nature of regulatory choice.

The first alternative method, known colloquially as architecture or “code,” occurs when regulators change a physical or digital environment to make undesirable conduct difficult. Speed bumps provide a classic example. The second method, libertarian paternalism or “nudging,” …