The Law of Good People

Challenging States' Ability to Regulate Human Behavior

Yuval Feldman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781107137103
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108682664
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

Currently, the dominant enforcement paradigm is based on the idea that states deal with 'bad people' - or those pursuing their own self-interests - with laws that exact a price for misbehavior through sanctions and punishment. At the same time, by contrast, behavioral ethics posits that 'good people' are guided by cognitive processes and biases that enable them to bend the laws within the confines of their conscience. In this illuminating book, Yuval Feldman analyzes these paradigms and provides a broad theoretical and empirical comparison of traditional and non-traditional enforcement mechanisms to advance our understanding of how states can better deal with misdeeds committed by normative citizens blinded by cognitive biases regarding their own ethicality. By bridging the gap between new findings of behavioral ethics and traditional methods used to modify behavior, Feldman proposes a 'law of good people' that should be read by scholars and policymakers around the world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Reviews
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Behavioral Ethics and the Meaning of “Good People” for Legal Enforcement
• 3 Revisiting Traditional Enforcement Interventions
• 4 Revisiting Non-formal Enforcement Interventions
• 5 Social Norms and Compliance
• 6 Are All People Equally Good?
• 7 Pluralistic Account of the Law: The Multiple Effects of Law on Behavior
• 8 Enforcement Dilemmas and Behavioral Trade-offs
• 9 The Corruption of “Good People”
• 10 Discrimination by “Good” Employers
• 11 Summary and Conclusion
• Index