Social Norms and Legal Design

Bruno Deffains and Claude Fluet

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2020, vol. 36, issue 1, 139-169

Abstract: We consider legal obligations against a background of social norms, for example, societal norms, professional codes of conduct, or business standards. Violations of the law trigger reputational sanctions insofar as they signal nonadherence to underlying norms, raising the issue of the design of offenses. We show that the law generally ought to follow social norms or be stricter than them. When society is only concerned with the trade-off between deterrence and enforcement costs, legal standards defining offenses should align with underlying norms so long as the latter are not too deficient. When providing productive information to third parties is also a concern, legal standards should either align with underlying norms with fines that trade off deterrence against the provision of information; or legal standards should be more demanding and enforced with purely symbolic sanctions, for example, public reprimands. Our analysis has implications for general law enforcement and regulatory policies.

JEL-codes: D8 K4 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Social Norms and Legal Design (2019)
Working Paper: Social Norms and Legal Design (2019)
Working Paper: Social Norms and Legal Design (2015)
Working Paper: Social Norms and Legal Design (2015)
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