Following the analyses in Chapters 1 and 2 , this chapter examines in depth the methodology for the study of criminal law, focusing on the social control by norms, the function and nature of legal norms, normative determinism, the principle of utility, the protection of constitutional freedom, and safeguards against the abuse of investigative tools. It further addresses issues such as deterrence by legal norms of criminal law, utilitarian analysis of invasive means such as searches and arrests, and “terminological techniques” in the study of law. It argues from a utilitarian perspective, developing H.L.A. Hart’s and Jeremy Bentham’s analyses of law, that legal norms are ideational objects that exist independently of individual consciousness as intersubjectively existing entities and as such influence the process of human consciousness.