I Fought the Law and the Law Won? Legal Consciousness and the Critical Imagination

TY - JOUR

T1 - I Fought the Law and the Law Won?

T2 - Legal Consciousness and the Critical Imagination

AU - Halliday, Simon

AU - Morgan, Bronwen

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - The study of legal consciousness within socio-legal studies entails a focus on the ordinary, quotidian and, crucially, almost invisible life of law in society. To study legal consciousness is to study the taken-for-granted and not-immediately-noticeable: the background assumptions about legality which structure and inform everyday thoughts and actions. This article examines legal consciousness through the lens of the cultural theory of Mary Douglas. The application of her grid–group analysis offers important insights into the dimensions along which legal consciousness may vary. In doing so, it sheds light on an under-studied feature of the legal consciousness landscape: collective voices of dissent. We explore, via a secondary data analysis of radical environmental activists, a legal consciousness which expresses particularly clearly a collective rejection of the authority of state law. The analysis reveals a complex and multi-faceted legal consciousness where a rejection of state law may be coupled with a gaming approach towards it for collective aims, and can be fuelled by a faith in legality above or beyond state law. It also points to the organizational vulnerability of dissenting collectivism and a corresponding affinity between a legal consciousness of collective dissent and one of fatalism. Our analysis allows us to critique and refine Ewick and Silbey’s influential account of legal consciousness. These analytical and theoretical insights point towards a future research agenda, which maintains the legal consciousness tradition of focusing on the structural qualities of law while avoiding the pitfalls of a theory of general legal hegemony.

AB - The study of legal consciousness within socio-legal studies entails a focus on the ordinary, quotidian and, crucially, almost invisible life of law in society. To study legal consciousness is to study the taken-for-granted and not-immediately-noticeable: the background assumptions about legality which structure and inform everyday thoughts and actions. This article examines legal consciousness through the lens of the cultural theory of Mary Douglas. The application of her grid–group analysis offers important insights into the dimensions along which legal consciousness may vary. In doing so, it sheds light on an under-studied feature of the legal consciousness landscape: collective voices of dissent. We explore, via a secondary data analysis of radical environmental activists, a legal consciousness which expresses particularly clearly a collective rejection of the authority of state law. The analysis reveals a complex and multi-faceted legal consciousness where a rejection of state law may be coupled with a gaming approach towards it for collective aims, and can be fuelled by a faith in legality above or beyond state law. It also points to the organizational vulnerability of dissenting collectivism and a corresponding affinity between a legal consciousness of collective dissent and one of fatalism. Our analysis allows us to critique and refine Ewick and Silbey’s influential account of legal consciousness. These analytical and theoretical insights point towards a future research agenda, which maintains the legal consciousness tradition of focusing on the structural qualities of law while avoiding the pitfalls of a theory of general legal hegemony.

KW - socio-legal studies

KW - legal consciousness

KW - environment

KW - cultural theory

KW - radical activism

U2 - 10.1093/clp/cut002

DO - 10.1093/clp/cut002

M3 - Article

SN - 0070-1998

VL - 66

SP - 1

EP - 32

JO - Current Legal Problems

JF - Current Legal Problems

IS - 1

ER -