241657 Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Procedural Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Regulation

Wednesday, November 2, 2011: 8:30 AM

Thomas Tyler, PhD , Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY
Scott Burris, JD, LLD , Beasley School of Law, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Law is recognized as a prominent intervention tool through which government can seek to achieve public health goals. Regulations are an effort by government to improve public health by putting the force of law behind stopping unhealthy behaviors. It might be imagined that the impact of law is straightforward. If a law is passed and backed up by threats of fines, arrest, incarceration or other such punishments, behavior should change. In reality however, obtaining compliance with the law is complex and can be difficult. Procedural justice is the study of people's subjective evaluations of the justice of procedures—whether they are fair or unfair, ethical or unethical, and otherwise accord with people's standards of fair processes for social interaction and decision-making. This presentation will examine the complexity of procedural justice and the legal mechanisms for enhancing procedural justice operating at individual, organizational and community levels to modify health behaviors and improve population health.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
• Discuss the limits of command-and-control approaches to regulating health-related behavior. • Describe theories of procedural justice, legitimacy and self-regulation and their utility in explaining compliance with the law. • Explain ways in which procedural justice has been measured, noting how such measures could be applied empirically to public health law research.

Keywords: Law, Theory

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Scott Burris is the Director of the National Program Office for Public Health Law Research funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.