In The Force of Law, Fred Schauer challenges the view that sanctions are philosophically
marginal to law, and proposes to replace conceptual analysis with empirical research
in jurisprudence. This article defends a complementary role for conceptual analysis in legal
theory. By comparing the threat of punishment and the promise of reward, it shows how conceptual
inquiry can generate explanatory hypotheses about the features of legal phenomena,
and clarify the normative structure of legal regulation.