Publication Date
2010
Abstract
Debates about the obligation to obey the law have been around for literally thousands of years, but the empirical side has received much less attention. Moreover, most of the existing empirical work has focused on citizens and not officials, and consequently we know little about the extent to which law qua law motivates official action. This Article seeks to encourage empirical inquiry into the particular question of whether officials obey the law as law, independent of the content of the law and independent of the possibility of sanctions for non-compliance. It offers the hypothesis that although there is much talk about official obligation to the law, in fact officials rarely obey the law just because it is the law, and are rarely politically punished for engaging in sanction-free illegal actions when their constituents approve of their first-order substantive decisions. For official behavior, therefore, there may be less internalization of law than is commonly supposed. If this hypothesis turns out to be true, the implications for public law may be considerable.
Recommended Citation
Schauer, Frederick
(2010)
"When and How (If at All) Does Law Constrain Official Action?,"
Georgia Law Review: Vol. 44:
No.
3, Article 5.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol44/iss3/5