H. Szilágyi István: Research on Legal Consciousness in Hungarian Sociology of Law After the Regime Change
2025/17
The aim of the study is to review the results of sociological research in this field after 1989, as part of a research program examining the theoretical and methodological issues of legal consciousness research in Hungary. The introduction seeks to explore the reasons for the decline in the field of legal studies after the change of regime, and the analysis then follows the research decade by decade. In the 1990s, the study of legal socialization established a thematic link with the previous era, while political sociology and legal anthropology provided the impetus for theoretical and methodological renewal. In the decade following the turn of the millennium, the use of legal language and the application of administrative law emerged as new areas of research. The last decade has seen a second flowering of legal studies, with a remarkable increase in the intensity, thematic and methodological diversity of research. In 2010, the first nationally representative questionnaire survey was conducted after the regime change, followed by several other surveys using similar methods. In addition, a series of qualitative surveys were carried out on topics related to the phenomenon of legal consciousness, such as the perception of law and the legal profession among lay people, law students and lawyers. This decade also saw the first empirical comparative research, mainly aimed at assessing the Hungarian rights consciousness in an international context. The summary of the study, in addition to taking stock of the theoretical and methodological implications of the research, also provides a brief synthesis of its content. In this context, the paper draws attention to the fact that in the thirty years following the regime change, Hungarian legal culture and the legal consciousness of the Hungarian population have changed only to a minor extent.