Economic theories of legal compliance emphasize legal sanctions, while psychological and sociological theories stress the perceived legitimacy of law.
Somehow in the middle expressive law theorist in the ninties suggested that the law can change equilibria both by coordinating people beliefs about others' actions and by changing individual values. This has strong implications both for the design of legal rules and the theory of compliance. In this workshop we review the literature with particular emphasis on the empirical testing of expressive law theories. The focus will be on recent experimental literature trying to test the existence of an expressive function of formal rules and the channels thorugh wich formal rules affect individuals' behavior.