A second introductory essay, by Oisín Wall, discusses the historical use of psychological tests to enforce normative ideals and weed out the "abnormal or deviant".
Religious people might choose to avail themselves of the guidance provided by their respective religions, but it is unreasonable to enforce normative views, derived from claims about a God, uniformly on a societal level given the multicultural and multi-faith nature of Canada in the 21st century.
Unfortunately this ideal is pretty un-inclusive and enforces gender normative roles.
In an LA Review of Books interview published after his realist novel Dissident Gardens, literary fantasist Jonathan Lethem probed at the weaknesses of both forms of fiction: "Realism enforces a normative sense of what constitutes reality," he told LARB's Brian Gresko.
(Though Mattel has begun to market Barbies to boys, Hello Barbie assumes I'm a girl, or at least enforces female gender-normative tropes on to me, which is a refreshing change of pace).
The latter two questions seem deeply connected, for population members typically enforce social behaviors and rules having normative force by sanctions placed on those failing to comply with the relevant norm; and the presence of sanctions, if suitably strong, explains the persistence of the norm.
Those writers often described the process of enlarging the competence of the agencies in terms of international organizations progressively acquiring normative, rule-creating, rule-enforcing, and finally programmatic responsibilities.
In view of the normative function of law in creating and enforcing obligations and rights, it always makes sense to ask whether law is just, and where it is found deficient to demand reform.
The basic idea seems simple: in some way, the agreement (or consent) of all individuals subject to collectively enforced social arrangements shows that those arrangements have some normative property (they are legitimate, just, obligating, etc).
International conventions set "normative" standards for contracting countries, but individuals cannot enforce those standards unless they are incorporated into Australian law.
Law is an open normative system (Raz 1975, pp. 152-54): it adopts and enforces many other standards, including moral norms and the rules of social groups.
