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Social Norms and Legal Design

Author

Listed:
  • Bruno Deffains

    (CRED - Centre de Recherche en Economie et Droit - UP2 - Université Panthéon-Assas)

  • Claude Fluet

    (ULaval - Université Laval [Québec])

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.
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Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Deffains & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Social Norms and Legal Design," Post-Print hal-04129316, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04129316
    DOI: 10.1093/jleo/ewz016
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    Cited by:

    1. Grolleau, Gilles & Mungan, Murat C. & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2022. "Seemingly irrelevant information? The impact of legal team size on third party perceptions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. Roberto Galbiati & Emeric Henry & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2019. "Learning to cooperate in the shadow of the law," SciencePo Working papers hal-03393094, HAL.
    3. repec:pra:mprapa:113760 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Christoph Rössler & Tim Friehe, 2020. "Liability, morality, and image concerns in product accidents with third parties," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 295-312, October.
    5. Fluet, Claude & Mungan, Murat C., 2022. "Laws and norms with (un)observable actions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    6. Govindan, Pavitra, 2022. "How do informal norms affect rule compliance: Experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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