Abstract
It is evident that both law and morality serve to channel our behavior. Law accomplishes this primarily through the threat of sanctions if we disobey legal rules. Morality too involves incentives: bad acts may result in guilt and disapprobation, and good acts may result in virtuous feelings and praise. These two very different avenues of effect on our actions are examined in this article from an instrumental perspective. The analysis focuses on various social costs associated with law and morality, and on their effectiveness, as determined by the magnitude and likelihood of sanctions and by certain informational factors. After the relative character of law and of morality as means of control of conduct is assessed, consideration is given to their theoretically optimal domains—to where morality alone would appear to be best to control behavior, to where morality and the law would likely be advantageous to employ jointly, and to where solely the law would seem desirable to utilize. The observed pattern of use of morality and of law is discussed, and it is tentatively suggested that the observed and the optimal patterns are in rough alignment with one another.
Journal Information
The rise of the field of law and economics has been extremely rapid over the last 25 years. Among important developments of the 1990s has been the founding of the American Law and Economics Association. The creation and rapid expansion of the ALEA and the creation of parallel associations in Europe, Latin America, and Canada attest to the growing acceptance of the economic perspective on law by judges, practitioners, and policy-makers. The Review is a refereed journal, published twice a year. It maintains the highest scholarly standards, and at the same time endeavours to publish international work that is accessible to the full range of membership in the ALEA, which includes practising lawyers, consulting economics and academic lawyers, and academic economists from around the world. The Review differs from other journals in the field in that it features book reviews and review essays. It also differs from other scholarly economic journals in particular, in that the Editors endeavour to make the material more easily accessible to non-academics.
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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
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American Law and Economics Review © 2002 Oxford University Press
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The University of Toronto Law Journal has taken a broad and visionary approach to legal scholarship since its beginnings in 1935. Its first editor, Professor WPM Kennedy, hoped that the Journal would foster a knowledge of law “as expressions of organized human life, of ordered progress, and of social justice.” The University of Toronto Law Journal has since established itself as a leading journal for theoretical, interdisciplinary, comparative and other conceptually oriented inquiries into law and law reform. The Journal regularly publishes articles that study law from such perspectives as legal philosophy, law and economics, legal history, criminology, law and literature, and feminist analysis. Global in relevance, international in scope, it publishes work by highly regarded scholars from many countries, including Australia, Israel, Germany, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom.
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University of Toronto Press is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America, with particular strengths in the social sciences, humanities, and business. The Book Publishing Division is widely recognized in Canada for its strength in history, political science, sociology, Indigenous studies, and cultural studies. Internationally, UTP is a leading publisher of medieval, Renaissance, Italian, Iberian, Slavic, and urban studies, as well as studies in book and print culture. The Journals Division has been an important part of the Press since its foundation and has built a strong reputation for excellence in scholarship and innovation in publishing. We work hand-in-hand with world-class authors, editors and scholarly societies to publish 40+ journals in a variety of disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences, and medicine. We are passionate about high-quality content, digital distribution, and the success of scholarly journals and are making major strides forward in areas such as online peer review systems and multimedia publishing, such as videos and podcasts. Our goal is to be a leading journal publisher in North America, serving the North American and international academic community with superior journals, exceptional services, and customer-focused employees.
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This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.
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The University of Toronto Law Journal © 1962
University of Toronto Press
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