Legal Consciousness Reconsidered

Legal consciousness is a vibrant research field attracting growing numbers of scholars worldwide. Yet differing assumptions about aims and methods have generated vigorous debate, typically resulting from a failure to recognize that three different clusters of scholars — identified here as the Identity, Hegemony, and Mobilization schools — are pursuing different goals and deploying the concept of legal consciousness in different ways. Scholarship associated with these three schools demonstrates that legal consciousness is actually a flexible paradigm with multiple applications rather than a monolithic approach. Furthermore, a new generation of scholars has energized the field in recent years, focusing on marginalized peoples and non-Western settings. Through their findings, and as a result of broader trends across the social sciences, relational legal consciousness has taken on greater importance. Legal consciousness research should be imagined on a continuum ranging from individualistic conceptualizations of thought and action to interactive, co-constitutive approaches.