The concept of legal consciousness implicates a broad range of human activities and relationships.

As the previous reading by Qian Liu suggests, the legal consciousness perspective helps us to understand issues of family life, parent-child relationships, and marriage. It is also useful for researchers who study transactions of various kinds - commercial exchanges, consumer activ­ities, landlord-tenant relationships, and others.

Perhaps the most frequent application of the legal consciousness perspec­tive, however, has been in the area of legal rights - the entitlements each individual can claim under law to guarantee his or her freedom, autonomy, and fair treatment. Researchers have time and again attempted to explain when, why, and how the intended beneficiaries of legal rights actually invoke them. In some cases, rights-holders decide to make formal legal claims. In other cases, they may assert rights informally - in conversations with others or by referring to them within institutional procedures and structures as employ­ees, customers, and so forth. In still other cases, individuals may be aware of their rights but choose not to invoke them. And, for many individuals, rights may remain dormant because individuals simply do not know they exist.

The readings in this section directly address issues of rights consciousness and demonstrate that the existence of rights “on the books” tells us little about the situations in which rights actually become active in people's lives. To understand the pathways that rights follow, the authors turn to the theories and methods of legal consciousness research. Readers should note that this portion of Chapter 4 deals with rights consciousness. In Chapter 5, we will address studies that examine the different ways in which rights are mobilized.

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