Authors

Agnieszka Kubal¹;  ¹ Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

This chapter advances a relational approach to legal consciousness, drawing on Mustafa Emirbayer’s relational sociology manifesto and the lived experiences of applicants before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It makes three key contributions. First, it foregrounds how the ECtHR’s institutional role - particularly that of the Registrar - and contextual positioning - vis-à-vis other UN bodies - shapes legal consciousness through modes of interaction, discretion, and distancing. Second, it examines how networks of legal professionals and advocacy organisations mediate individuals’ experience of the law, highlighting legal alienation as a relational and co-produced phenomenon. Third, it analyses time and time-lag not merely as delay but as a constitutive element of legal consciousness, reshaping how both applicants and lawyers relate to justice and to law itself. Drawing on case material from Eastern Europe and Russia, the chapter argues that legal consciousness is a dynamic, socially embedded process unfolding through relationships, institutional encounters, and temporal disjunctures.