Sanctions, Law and Public Order

A more creative conception of criminal law, and a more scientific andpolicy-minded approach to the organization of research, instruction and consultationconcerning the use of criminal and other negative sanctions, \u27havelong been in making in the minds of many working in the field, in manywidely separated places. My purpose in this paper is briefly to describe thekind of program currently conceived-to these ends in the Yale School of Law.Stemming from a series of exploratory studies and seminars conductedover the past few, years in collaboration with members of the Departmentsof Anthropology, Psychiatry and Public Health in the University, our programt is concerned with the technique of public order-that is to say, the know-how of the use of negative sanctions to preserve desired aspects of aculture or, as the case may be, to promote desired culture change. All penaland regulatory laws prescribing negative sanctions are, of course, addressedto one of these ends