Individuals within the same jurisdiction often have different perceptions of the legal system, a phenomenon we call legal disagreement. Cross-country analyses of legal institutions generally ignore this kind of within-country variation. This article defines the concept of legal disagreement, identifies its potential causes and consequences, and shows that it can be measured using data from cross-country surveys. We argue that legal disagreement is likely to be caused by differences in individuals’ sources of information about the legal system, how the system treats cases of a given type, or how individuals process legal information, all of which may be related to differences in social position. We also suggest that understanding why individuals disagree about legal systems is valuable for several reasons, particularly when the disagreement reflects systematic differences in beliefs across people in different social positions. We use data from World Justice Project population surveys to create quantitative measures of legal disagreement for 128 countries or jurisdictions. We identify correlations between legal disagreement and measures of its potential causes and consequences, such as perceptions of discrimination and ethnic fractionalization. We also provide evidence that those variations are driven by differences in perceptions that track differences in gender, financial well-being, and class.

同一管辖范围内的个人往往对法律制度有不同的看法，这种现象我们称为法律分歧。对法律制度的跨国分析通常忽略这种国内差异。本文定义了法律分歧的概念，确定了其潜在的原因和后果，并表明可以使用跨国调查的数据来衡量它。我们认为，法律分歧很可能是由于个人对法律制度的信息来源、制度如何处理特定类型的案件或个人如何处理法律信息的差异而引起的，所有这些都可能与社会观念的差异有关。位置。我们还建议，出于多种原因，了解个人对法律制度存在分歧的原因是有价值的，特别是当分歧反映了不同社会地位的人们之间信仰的系统性差异时。我们使用世界正义项目人口调查的数据来量化 128 个国家或司法管辖区的法律分歧。我们确定了法律分歧与其潜在原因和后果的衡量标准之间的相关性，例如对歧视和种族分裂的看法。我们还提供证据表明，这些差异是由追踪性别、财务状况和阶级差异的认知差异所驱动的。