The coercibility of legal norms enables the State to use force to guarantee compliance.
Coercibility is a term that is not part of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . The concept comes from the notion of coercion , which is the pressure exerted on a person to force a change in their behavior or will. Coercibility is understood, therefore, as the quality of coercion .
For example: "The State must exercise coercibility responsibly and without overwhelming rights" , "Every legal norm implies coercibility, but that does not mean that laws must be understood as a form of repression" , "With me, coercibility does not work: I always do what I want, regardless of the consequences .
Enforceability of a legal norm
A legal norm is a rule that must be respected and that makes it possible to regulate activities or behaviors. These norms can be classified as imperative norms (people cannot do without their content, so these norms are independent of the will of the individual) or dispositive norms (they are dispensable through the principle of autonomy of the will ).
The coercibility of legal norms is given in the power granted to the State to apply physical force on people who refuse to comply with them. Violation of the norm, therefore, may lead to a response that involves the use of force by state authorities.
Legal and legitimate use of force
Coercibility, in short, is linked to the possibility of the legal and legitimate use of force so that the law is complied with and the precepts of the norms are made effective. This characteristic of legislation opposes the concept of incoercibility , which implies the absence of a physical action for a norm to be fulfilled, and expects citizens to proceed to act in the expected way spontaneously, although this does not mean that they do not There are negative consequences in case of failure.
It is important to remember that all norms contemplate a sanction for those who do not comply with them, and that the distinction made in the previous paragraph responds to the fact that only legal norms are based on coercibility.
If an individual refuses to accept a court ruling, coercibility allows a judge to call on security forces to ensure compliance.
Coercibility and compulsion
A term often related to the concept of coercibility is compulsion , which can be defined as any measure that the judge can take to act against someone who resists obeying his orders ; In other words, it is an injunction to get a person who refuses to comply with what he has been ordered to decide to do so. It is also possible to define enforcement as the summary route or the execution procedure that is more rigorous and brief than that of an executive trial, and is also called the executory route .
For example, if a father who is ordered by a judge to pay child support every month refuses to obey, the judge may choose to send him to jail, or seize all of his assets to use as deposit to cover the pensions of minors.
The law is closely linked to coercibility, since it generally relies on it to be able to apply the laws, and coercion is one of the measures that the State can use to ensure that everyone complies with the rules, even when they resist doing it.
Application of a penalty
In the same way, the term penalty is also related to coercibility, although it has different meanings and uses, since it is a punishment that a legitimate authority can impose on someone who has committed a fault or crime.
When a person steals or mistreats another, physically or psychologically, the severity of their actions determines the penalty to which they will be sentenced, to mention one possibility.