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10 - Legal Constraint

from Part I - Foundations and Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2025

By
Brian Sheppard
Edited by
Kevin Tobia
Kevin Tobia
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

People who live under a rule of law typically want their laws to work. At their strongest, laws cause people to refrain from doing what they otherwise would have done and act in favor of the law. This is “legal constraint.” If a law doesn’t do what is intended, there is a good chance that it is because of a failure of constraint. When people knowingly commit crimes, they have failed to be legally constrained. When judges reach results they favor because they did not pay due regard to the law that applies to their cases, they have failed to be constrained too. This is why political commentators frequently complain that a law “lacks teeth” or that judges are “activists.” But legal constraint is not just the stuff of political sniping. Legal philosophers, too, have a keen interest in it. In this chapter, I will first discuss how the insights of twentieth-century jurisprudence set the parameters for the empirical study of legal constraint. Thereafter, I will show how experimental methods are particularly well suited to this study. Finally, I will review the literature in experimental jurisprudence that bears upon legal constraint.

Keywords

constraintgeneral jurisprudencerulesnorms
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence , pp. 150 - 170
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Legal Constraint
  • Edited by Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence
  • Online publication: 17 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170901.011
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  • Legal Constraint
  • Edited by Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence
  • Online publication: 17 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170901.011
Available formats
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  • Legal Constraint
  • Edited by Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence
  • Online publication: 17 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170901.011
Available formats
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