What is normative reasoning?

How should society decide what their laws and rules are like? What should matter to these important social choices?

This is what normative theory helps us explore. Normative statements make claims about how institutions should or ought to be designed, how to value them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong.

The economic analysis of law empowers you not simply to describe legal rules, principles, and doctrines but critically to evaluate them. The normative principles reflected in economic legal analysis can apply not only to decisions you make in your own life, but also to social decisions about what the law should be like and why it should be that way. It’s important to bear in mind that normative issues are contentious and the answers are not obvious – reasonable people often disagree about them.