IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/judgdm/v9y2014i5p479-490_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The letter versus the spirit of the law: A lay perspective on culpability

Author

Listed:
  • Garcia, Stephen M.
  • Chen, Patricia
  • Gordon, Matthew T.

Abstract

The letter of the law is its literal meaning. Here, the spirit of the law is its perceived intention. We tested the hypothesis that violating the spirit of the law accounts for culpability above and beyond breaking the mere letter. We find that one can incur culpability even when the letter of the law is not technically broken. We examine this effect across various legal contexts and discuss the implications for future research directions.

Suggested Citation

  • Garcia, Stephen M. & Chen, Patricia & Gordon, Matthew T., 2014. "The letter versus the spirit of the law: A lay perspective on culpability," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(5), pages 479-490, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:5:p:479-490_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500006835/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:5:p:479-490_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jdm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.