Law and liberation: Legal consciousness and legal mobilization in post-communist Europe

From Poland to Hungary to Belarus, early twenty-first century pro-democracy activists have confronted their governments and faced repercussions within and outside the confines of the law. Does law have the capacity for liberation under hybrid or illiberal conditions? How does legal mobilization happen in these contexts, and what kind of strategies do activists deploy? This chapter explores legal consciousness and mobilization in the post-communist space and makes three claims. The first is that focusing on law in everyday life and on resistance through law, even under extreme authoritarianism, changes our understanding of law’s relationship to power under non-democratic conditions both historically and in contemporary settings. The second is that the post-communist space has been a leader on emerging forms of comparative, supranational, and transnational legal consciousness, which in turn contribute to novel types of legal mobilization. The third is that legal mobilization in the region can and does happen both with and without social movements, with implications for broader studies of social movements and mobilization.