Legal sanction

Definition and stakes

G. A. Johnston,  An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges… (1915)

“ The sanction of a legal enactment is the penalty which is incurred when the law is broken. A man is "bound over" to keep the peace, and it is stipulated that unless he keeps the peace, he will have to pay the penalty. The fear of punishment is thus, from the legal standpoint, the sanction of his good conduct. Various sanctions may be appealed to as reasons why right actions should be done, and wrong ones avoided, but perhaps the most common is the sanction of punishment. If you do this wrong action, it is said, you will be punished; and if you don't do that right action, you will be punished. ”
Source: Wikisource

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