“I'm gonna call my lawyer:” shifting legal consciousness at the intersection of inequality

Abstract

Many studies on legal consciousness suggest that the poor and working class are fundamentally excluded or disadvantaged, having a different legal consciousness from others that is “against the law” or cynical and dismissive about the law. My study is the first to examine polyvocality and change in legal consciousness among the poor. The women in my study are disadvantaged, to be sure, and face barriers to learning and mastering the law. But the interviews conducted for this study revealed that a remarkable shift in legal consciousness could take place as a result of the interface of perceptions, experience, and interaction with legal services, courts, and other members of the community. In this chapter, I develop a theoretical framework of legal entitlement in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the variations and changes in legal consciousness among low-income mothers as well as how these differences impact the ways in which marginalized group members come to develop and exercise legal consciousness and also to mobilize the law.

Citation

Hernández, D. (2010), "“I'm gonna call my lawyer:” shifting legal consciousness at the intersection of inequality", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 51), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 95-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2010)0000051007