A ‘European’ Conception of Legal Consciousness: Rediscovering Eugen Ehrlich

This paper discusses the present ‘legal consciousness’ literature and seeks to identify two different conceptions of legal consciousness. Most of this literature originated in the United States, but there has also been a growing interest in issues of legal consciousness in Europe. The use of the term ‘legal consciousness ’ in these European discussions is, however, remarkably different from its use in the United States literature. It is argued that the most commonly used ‘American ’ conception of legal consciousness reflects important ideas of Roscoe Pound and asks: how do people experience (official) law? By contrast, a European conception of legal consciousness, which was first introduced by the Austrian legal theorist Eugen Ehrlich, focuses on: what do people experience as ‘law ’? After both perspectives are applied in a case‐study of a run‐down neighbourhood in the Netherlands, it is concluded that future studies of legal consciousness may benefit from an integration of the two conceptions.