Between Stick and Carrot: Unpacking Schauer's Account of Legal Coercion

In The Force of Law, Fred Schauer challenges the view that sanctions are philosophically marginal to law, and proposes to replace conceptual analysis with empirical research in jurisprudence. This article defends a complementary role for conceptual analysis in legal theory. By comparing the threat of punishment and the promise of reward, it shows how conceptual inquiry can generate explanatory hypotheses about the features of legal phenomena, and clarify the normative structure of legal regulation.