Total bans like Prohibition fail without corresponding enforcement capacity

Evidence

It is one thing, of course, to pass a law, and quite another to enforce it. The troubles of Prohibition are legendary, and most historians consider it a dismal failure. It certainly did not get rid of alcohol, although there is a good deal of dispute about its actual impact. There was clearly a lot of evasion, corruption, and scandal. After a decade or so of conflict and misery, the country got rid of it with enactment of the Twenty-​first Amendment (1933). — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 820

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Rules without enforcement mechanisms are meaningless. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 143; Criminal justice marks, prevents, and punishes wrong conduct in sequence — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 783; Permanent-exclusion licensing sanctions are so powerful they are rarely invoked, weakening their deterrent value — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1099 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Legal rules become binding only when supporters hold enforcement power #corroborates (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 471
• Remaining prohibitions face structural barriers the completed reforms did not #corroborates (0.82) — , The Rod and the Child, 7999
• A rule only counts when enforced in practice #corroborates (0.82) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 54
• Legal prohibition without religious-institutional embedding remains only nominal #corroborates (0.80) — , The Rod and the Child, 8206
• Constitutional adjudication can achieve total prohibition where legislation cannot #qualifies (0.80) — , The Rod and the Child, 10912
• Total prohibition beats partial limits as a tacit agreement focus #corroborates (0.78) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 191
• US Prohibition failed due to resistance from marginal backward forces #complicates (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1032
• Prohibition laws work as normative signals, not criminal sanctions #contradicts (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 10897
• Regulatory exemptions function as exploitable loopholes undermining enforcement #expands (0.74) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1536
• Prohibitions without enforcement can make severe abuse harder to detect #corroborates (0.72) — , The Rod and the Child, 7800
• Regulated activities are hard to distinguish from the prohibited ones they resemble #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1545