Legal Expressivism: A Primer

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a basic primer on legal expressivism for scholars with a general interest in normative legal theory as well as those who are interested in applying the teachings of legal expressivism to novel regulatory contexts. It first surveys the two main strands of legal expressivism: instrumental expressivism and revelatory expressivism. After discussing the meaning of revelatory expressivism, the paper briefly addresses an issue that critics have raised with revelatory expressivism - its controversial commitment to some form of "objective" public meanings of legal actions. The paper concludes by briefly exploring the relationship between normative legal theory and the two main strands of legal expressivism.

Keywords: Expressivism, expressivist theories of law, revelatory expressivism, expressive harms, New Chicago School, law and economics, normative legal theory, law and social norms,