Goodbye Justice, Hello Happiness : Welcoming Positive Psychology to the Law

Legal regulation is the most coercive and effective behaviour modifying tool in our community. As a general rule, law relates to the areas of human activity which are viewed as important to the human condition. It follows that the content of the law; that is, legal rules and principles, are central to human happiness. This is not controversial. Laws are purposeful. This is a point that has always been recognised implicitly or expressly by law-makers, philosophers, lawyers and the community at large. This is reflected in the fact the people evaluate and critique legal standards. There are supposedly 'good' laws, 'bad' laws and many in the middle. While we all agree that law is purposeful, there has been intense debate over the centuries regarding the appropriate ends of law. Most forcefully it has been argued that the ultimate ends of the law, the benchmark against legal systems and laws should be evaluated, is the notion of justice. Laws are also often benchmarked on the basis of economic criteria. This paper contends that such standards are flawed benchmarks for evaluating the legal system. In the normal scheme of things, law should be evaluated by one criterion: its capacity to promote human well-being (or happiness). New developments in positive psychology (a discipline that has to date been ignored by law makers and legal commentators) conclusively establish that not only can the level of happiness be scientifically measured, but that we are very similar in terms of the activities that are conducive or inimical to our well-being. We have the same basic desires and needs and it is possible to develop a road map to happiness. We can now tell with a large degree of confidence whether a given activity is likely to diminish or promote happiness. The current state of research makes it possible for us to predict with a high degree of confidence the likely effect that many laws have on human flourishing. Further research in this area will facilitate the increasing accuracy of such predictions. Happiness is a more relevant and important benchmark than justice because, despite the thousands of years that have been spent examining the notion of justice, its meaning remains vague and indeterminate and hence provides little guidance on important issues. More importantly, justice is less important than happiness. Who needs justice if we are all happy?