Are All Legal Probabilities Created Equal?

This probability is a result of several sequential probabilities that involve the different actors responsible for sanctioning wrongdoers (e.g. police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, etc.). Generally, legal economists treat different legal probabilities as fungible and simply multiply them m uch like any other sequential probabilistic situation.

In this paper we challenge this assumption, and demonstrate that different types of legal probabilities are perceived by people as different and are expected to affect their behavior in distinct ways. More specifically, we show that uncertainty associated with legal ambiguity and uncertainty associated with imperfect enforcement should not be treated as equal. To test these predictions, we designed a series of between-subjects experimental surveys that measured and compared participants’ attitudes toward compliance in conditions of uncertainty.