Mutual Expectations: A Conventionalist Theory of Law

The law persists because people have reasons to comply with its rules. What characterizes those reasons is their interdependence: each of us only has a reason to comply because he or she expects the others to comply for the same reasons. The rules may help us to solve coordination problems, but the interaction patterns regulated by them also include Prisoner's Dilemma games, Division problems and Assurance problems. In these "games" the rules can only persist if people can be expected to be...