ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a central element of the traditional approach to law that, and explains a significant portion of the gap between the two approaches to law. It considers one of several questions that are, in the legal-philosophical literature, encompassed in the problem of the normativity of law: What role should legal rules play in an agent's practical deliberations? H. L. A. Hart's own account of obligation and the normativity of law focus on the attitudes and behavior of public officials rather than all individuals. Hart's critique of the Austinian account of the grounds of the normativity of law is more successful than his own substantive answer to the question. Most economic analysts of law implicitly adopt the sanction theory of obligation that Hart criticized. An economic model that assumed that the agent incurred a cost additional to the official sanction when she failed to comply with an obligation would account for this discrepancy.
