New contributions of multidisciplinary and empirical approach to legal consciousness

This article introduces a legal consciousness construct consisting of six components (i.e., general legal knowledge, legal awareness, ad hoc legal knowledge, opinion about law, trust in law and legal identity) in individual and cross-cultural perspectives. It also offers two separate approaches to examining legal consciousness, namely legal consciousness as an empirical variable and legal consciousness as an input function of the legal system. The theoretical and methodological potential of legal consciousness as an example of multidisciplinary “behavioural legal science” and the possibilities of practical use of legal consciousness research are discussed in this article. The most relevant methodological, practical and ethical issues of legal consciousness research is also inspected.