Nobody's law : legal consciousness and legal alienation in everyday life / Marc Hertogh.

Nobody's law : legal consciousness and legal alienation in everyday life / Marc Hertogh.

London, United Kingdom : Palgrave Macmillan, [2018]

©2018

xv, 215 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Palgrave Macmillan socio-legal studies.
Palgrave pivot.

Nobody's Law shows how people - who are disappointed, disenchanted, and outraged about the justice system - gradually move away from law. Using detailed case studies and combining different theoretical perspectives, this book explores the legal consciousness of ordinary people, businessmen, and street-level bureaucrats in the Netherlands. The empirical research in this study tells an original and alternative narrative about the role of law in everyday life. While previous studies emphasize the law's hegemony and argue that it's 'all over', Hertogh shows that legal proliferation makes it harder for people to know, and subsequently identify with, the law. As a result, official law has become increasingly remote and irrelevant to many people. The central finding presented in this highly topical text is that these developments signal a process of 'legal alienation'-- a gradual and mundane process with potentially serious consequences for the legitimacy of law. A timely and original study, this book will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of law and society, socio-legal studies and legal theory.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-206) and index.

Online version: Hertogh, Marc. Nobody's Law. London : Palgrave Macmillan UK : Imprint: Palgrave Pivot, 2018

K230 .H4695 A36 2018

English

9781137603968 hardcover
1137603968 hardcover
9781137603975 (eBook)