Testing Alternative Legal Paradigms: An Experiment in Designing Tax Legislation
72 Pages Posted: 7 Aug 2006 Last revised: 25 Feb 2009
Date Written: May 31, 2006
Abstract
This article reports on empirical research undertaken to test the proposition that citizens could be made certain of their legal obligations by changing the legal paradigm used to express those obligations. The claim, that employing a new legal paradigm would increase levels of certainty, was made in the context of a particular set of tax reform proposals. Our research tested a number of hypotheses involving different conceptions of the claim being made. We find that the alternative paradigm being presented was inferior to current practice and offer some reasons which would explain our results and the significance of this work for other areas of legal research.
Keywords: taxation, empirical legal research, certainty, legislative drafting
JEL Classification: K34, H25, H26, G38, K22, K10, K34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation