Article
The Limits of Law as an Instrument of Normative Change
Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law
(2022)
Abstract
Why are many social norms ‘sticky’ and slow to change, and what, if anything, can this tell us about law’s ability to change social norms? This Article attempts to answer both these questions. The fact that many social norms are ‘sticky’ is a problem because it means inefficient norms can persist for long periods, if not indefinitely. These social norms can be dangerous from both an individual and a societal perspective. They may encourage such things as domestic violence, substance abuse, racism, institutional corruption, and structural inequality.
There is quite a bit of enthusiasm in the ‘law and norms’ literature around law’s ability to change inefficient social norms and influence behavior. This Article, however, argues that, despite this optimism, it is difficult to assess exactly how effective law is at changing social norms. To make my argument, I first explain why norms tend to be so sticky. I argue that social norms produce network effects that cause norms to become locked in and resistant to change. Once a social norm is locked in, actors cannot easily abandon it. The result is that a social norm may enjoy little genuine public support yet appear extremely stable because it is propped up and held in place by lock-in pressures. Thus, even in the cases where attempts at using law to change social norms appear successful, it is methodologically impossible to determine how important a role law played in causing the change and how much of it was simply because the social norm was fragile and already primed to collapse.
Keywords
- Social norms,
- lock-in,
- sticky norms,
- law and norms,
- network effects
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter 2022
Citation Information
Bryan H. Druzin. "The Limits of Law as an Instrument of Normative Change" Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law (2022) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bryan_druzin/39/