Rebecca Zeilstra is a PhD candidate and teacher, affiliated with the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance at Utrecht University.

Nudging and the Rule of Law
Nudging is the intentional altering of environmental circumstances by the government to influence people’s choice in a predictable way, without using force or significant financial incentives. An example is that people are psychologically stimulated to stop smoking by presenting pictures of illnesses on cigarette packages. A concern raised by ethicists is that nudging will negatively impact autonomy: it will become harder for individuals to make relatively independent and autonomous decisions when nudges affect their reflective psychological process. Legal scholars have not yet paid much attention to this discussion. This is surprising because autonomy is recognized as a core value in contemporary theory on the rule of law. Rebecca’s PhD project thus investigates how to evaluate the impact of nudging on the rule of law, considering that under the rule of law autonomy is a core value.

The project is supervised by prof. Janneke Gerards, and mr. dr. Lukas van den Berge.