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Article
What is Law? A Coordination Model of the Characteristics of Legal Order
Journal of Legal Analysis (2012)
  • Gillian K Hadfield, University of Southern California Law
  • Barry R. Weingast, Stanford University
Abstract

Legal philosophers have long debated the question, what is law? But few in social science have attempted to explain the phenomenon of legal order. In this article, we build a rational choice model of legal order in an environment that relies exclusively on decentralized enforcement, such as we find in human societies prior to the emergence of the nation state and inmanymodern settings.Wedemonstrate thatwecan support an equilibrium in which wrongful behavior is effectively deterred by exclusively decentralized enforcement, specifically collective punishment. Equilibrium is achieved by an institution that supplies a common logic for classifying behavior as wrongful or not. We argue that several features ordinarily associated with legal order—such as generality, impersonality, open process, and stability—can be explained by the incentive and coordination problems facing collective punishment.

Keywords
  • rule of law,
  • legal origin,
  • philosophy of law,
  • coordinated punishment,
  • collective punishment
Publication Date
2012
Citation Information
Gillian K Hadfield and Barry R. Weingast. "What is Law? A Coordination Model of the Characteristics of Legal Order" Journal of Legal Analysis Vol. 4 Iss. 2 (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ghadfield/36/