Compliance and legal authority

This entry addresses the question of how public compliance with the law is cultivated andsustained. Exploring the nature and impact of legal authority, we first consider the empiricalevidence for instrumental and normative modes of compliance and social regulation. Afterdescribing procedural justice and legitimacy as the most effective way of securing normativecompliance with the law, and arguing that such compliance is ethically and practicallypreferable to that secured by instrumental models of crime control, we then move on tooutline some of the current issues and challenges facing procedural justice researc