Impact: How Law Affects Behavior. By Lawrence M. Friedman. Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Abstract

Impact: How Law Affects Behavior. By Lawrence M. Friedman. Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016.Lawrence Friedman begins his new book, Impact, by suggesting that we may be able to sum up the project all of law and society scholarship in two questions. The first asks where laws come from and to what degree they are the product of social forces or autonomous creations of law itself? It is however the second question-the impact of these laws-that is the topic of this book. This division of the scholarship into two camps is a sweeping generalization, but an insightful one. At first Friedman says, he thought that law and society scholarship seemed more concerned with where law comes from, but he quickly realized that the impact of the law is equally important in socio-legal scholarship. Indeed the central observation of law and society scholarship that there is a difference between the law in the books and the law in action is an observation about impact, albeit not labeled as such. Criminology, regulatory compliance studies, and the rich literature on the influence and reach of U.S. Constitutional court decisions are all examples of impact studies. So is any exploration of the living law, how law actually works in practice.Friedman proceeds to summarise the law and society research on impact in a way that is highly accessible yet also comprehensive and rigorous. important underlying motive for this book is Friedman's concluding observation thatthe cup of research has been filled to overflowing. Hundreds of studies of deterrence. Hundreds of studies of regulation of business. And yet the results are often inconclusive. There are big gaps and holes in the research; but, more disturbingly, no consistency. The reader faces a eruption of research, but it hardly seems to be cumulative; it rarely adds up. (p. 249)Friedman proceeds to try to impose some order on this volcanic eruption. The book begins with the prerequisites for impact-the way that legal action communicates its messages (Chapter 2). Friedman discusses studies that investigate which audiences know what about the law, and how they come to learn it? What role do the media play in explaining or distorting the message of the law? What about the impact of the structure or drafting of the rule or decision itself? Is what people think they know about what the law requires really in fact what it requires? As Friedman points out, communication in some form is necessary, but not sufficient, for law to have impact. Chapter 3, An Anatomy of Compliance goes on to pull apart the concept of impact itself. While legal studies are concerned with the internal impact of the law on itself, socio-legal studies are concerned with the law's impact on the world. The chapter distinguishes helpfully between direct and indirect impact, immediate influence on compliance and ripple effects. It also makes a useful distinction between evaluations of law's impact and evaluations of whether it achieves its purpose, a more complex undertaking. Friedman is skeptical of the tendency in some socio-legal studies to find that legal reforms have had symbolic impacts even when no direct impact can be identified, especially where the direction of causation may be the other way around. …