What Do Laws Do?

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.

The thing about laws is that they have two functions. Their instrumental function is to tell us what is and is not allowed and what might happen to us if we do it anyway. Their symbolic function is to tell us what we value. Per Gusfield, laws, and the processes by which we come to have them, invite consideration about our society and what we think is morally correct. 

When I think about what might happen in the next five years, one thing that is nearly certain is that laws will change. But what is completely certain is that social institutions will adjust their practices in anticipation of legal changes, regardless of whether or not the law actually changes. For example, a company that imports furniture from Asia raise their prices by 20% on January 1, 2025 in anticipation of coming tariffs. They might do so because they think they can get away with it, or because they have a legitimate business reason for doing so but for the consumer, the reason does not matter. All that matters is that the $2,000 sofa they wanted to purchase in December 2024 is $2,400. At a certain point, the economic reasons for the shift do not matter. 

In fact, this is already happening with abortion. The horror stories we are all hearing right now about women bleeding out in parking lots are at least partially a story about corporate cowardice. The hospitals are requiring that their doctors involve legal counsel in any case that involves the potential for an abortion because they are afraid of getting sued. The doctors know that if they do not do as they are told, they will lose their jobs and because our society has no social safety net, this means their ability to survive. If laws have a symbolic function, and they do, our capitulation to unjust laws is a cowardly act. 

At a certain level, all of us have to be willing to accept the power that we wield in our workplaces. I hear all the time from people in all kinds of jobs - people who work in hospitals and schools and tech companies and universities and restaurants and retail stores - that they are being required to engage in practices that everything thinks are stupid, that no one values, and that are only there to reduce risk for their employer. The risk may be lower profits, the risk may be getting sued, the risk may be layoffs, but the fact is that these policies and practices will not happen without our complicity.

This is that meso level social change again. This is where our true power lies. Most of us cannot change laws. But we can refuse to implement them. And when (and it is when, not if) we are punished for that refusal we will know that the law is not for them, the people who make them, it is for us.