Reward, Law and Power: Toward a Jurisprudence of the Carrot

Positive sanctions play an important but underestimated role in societal regulation. This article examines reward in political and legal theory and explores the conceptual and practical dimensions of reward in the civil and criminal law. It argues that the mechanisms and ideology of reward have facilitated state intervention into private and corporate activity, delayed or denied due process and maintained social inequality. Possible changes in the nature of social control, from punishments to institutionalized rewards through the welfare state, are observed and the implications of such a change for sanction theory are discussed.