The Law Sanctions: Revisiting an Apparently Auto-Antonymous Concept

Abstract

The concept of “sanctions”, even though of great (some would argue: essential) importance to our understanding of how (and why) the law works is highly ambiguous. Contemporary legal discourse may refer to it, either to describe it as punishment for illegal acts (or something to that extent) or – to the contrary – to describe the (legal) approval of the act in question. Linguistically, thus “sanctions” are said to be auto-antonymous, carrying a second meaning within the term that reverses the first. The value of a seemingly self-contradictory concept at the very core of jurisprudential debates is questionable (at best). Meditating on the origins of “sanctions” shows, however, that we should – in fact – rather question our offhand use than the concept itself.