Sanctions, Law and Public Order

Abstract

A more creative conception of criminal law, and a more scientific and policy-minded approach to the organization of research, instruction and consultation concerning the use of criminal and other negative sanctions, 'have long been in making in the minds of many working in the field, in many widely separated places. My purpose in this paper is briefly to describe the kind of program currently conceived-to these ends in the Yale School of Law. Stemming from a series of exploratory studies and seminars conducted over the past few, years in collaboration with members of the Departments of Anthropology, Psychiatry and Public Health in the University, our program t 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 a culture or, as the case may be, to promote desired culture change. All penal and regulatory laws prescribing negative sanctions are, of course, addressed to one of these ends.