Frederick Schauer: 2 books

Many legal theorists maintain that laws are effective because we internalize them, obeying even when not compelled to do so. In a comprehensive reassessment of the role of force in law, Frederick Schauer disagrees, demonstrating that coercion, more than internalized thinking and behaving, distinguishes law from society’s other rules.

This is a philosophical but non-technical analysis of the very idea of a rule. Although focused somewhat on the role of rules in the legal system, it is also relevant to the place of rules in morality, religion, etiquette, games, language, and family governance. In both explaining the idea of a rule...