Publication Title
Social Norms - Foundations, Dynamics, and Contemporary Transformations
Year
2026
Abstract
This chapter examines what happens at the boundaries of rules: when social practices acquire legal recognition, when legal rules seek to reshape social expectations, and when formal and informal enforcement operate together. The conventional economic model treats the expected formal sanction as the principal source of compliance. Although this model provides a fundamental benchmark, it captures only part of the effects of legal intervention. The taxonomy developed here identifies the different ways in which legal, moral, and social incentives may interact. The kinds of public and private enforcement through which individuals express norms shape the additive, nonadditive, and countervailing effects that legal intervention may have. Law itself can express norms that influence the values individuals embrace. The norms internalized by individuals may either be increased, crowded out, or countervailed by expressive laws. The direction and magnitude of these effects depends in part on the existing norms and reactions within society. The broader lesson is simple: law is never introduced into a social vacuum. It governs behavior already shaped by moral beliefs, social expectations, and informal sanctions. Legal intervention may fail or even backfire when the boundaries between law and social norms – and social reactions to formal authority – are overlooked.
Recommended Citation
Francesco Parisi, Boundaries of Rules: Social Reactions to Legal Intervention, Social Norms - Foundations, Dynamics, and Contemporary Transformations (2026), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/1224.
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