Trust and ban – a critical reassessment of debates on the regulation of innovations in democracies

A common belief, which also underpins the EU’s current digital strategy, is that trust in normative orders can be fostered through the imposition of bans. The prevailing approach, informed in legal theory and in theoretical sociology, which we call a “communicative picture” tends to support such notions. This approach considers bans as a special form of communication that stabilizes expectations and thus generates trust, or at least functions as a latent reason for correct behavior. In contrast, our critical argument, derived from legal philosophy, is that the relationship between trust and ban varies in different fields of law. The transition to an institutional-argumentative justification of norms proposed here allows to critically reassess the questionable nexus of trust and ban.