‘Double vision’ in the interlegal: the situated pluri‐legal consciousness of British Muslim women

Abstract

Legal pluralism scholarship has argued that co‐existing legal orders interact. Individuals draw on exogenous norms to strategically resist social and legal constraints. Integrating the concepts of ‘situated legal consciousness’ and ‘interlegality’, I explore how identities within intersecting legal orders influence legal consciousness. To this end, I draw on a case study of the plurality in marriage laws among British Muslim communities in England, where Islamic nikah ceremonies are not by themselves recognized as marriage. My analysis shows that marginalized individuals routinely rely on interlegality to make sense of their realities and choices. This engenders a ‘double vision’, as individuals perceive their identities, social arrangements, and the law through an integrated lens of intersecting laws. They resist the social locations to which they are relegated in plural legal orders and reposition themselves within these with the aid of a composite identity that allows them to see their lifeworlds through a double vision of the law.