Abstract
This article focuses on various reasons to abide by social and legal rules. People who invest social rules with hefty normative power work at lousy jobs, stay in lousy marriages, and permit themselves only the most conventional pursuits. They beat back a percolating sense of despair by forcefully asserting that they are not quitters. People who invest legal rules with an authority that outdistances the wisdom of those rules become complicit in the injustices perpetrated in the name of law. The rationality of following any given rule resides in one's confidence that one is acting on the balance of reasons for action and not at all in the fact that there is a rule.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 75-84 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | San Diego Law Review |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 1 |
State | Published - Feb 1 2005 |
Keywords
- SOCIAL norms
- LAW
- REASON
- CODES of ethics
- SOCIAL control
- RATIONALISM