This article examines the ways the business community – here operationalised through Business Improvement Associations (BIAs) – thinks about and makes sense of the Law and the legal system, its legal consciousness, in other words. I suggest that the way BIAs think about and make sense of the Law is best described as ambivalent, ranging from reverence to disenchantment: on the one hand, the Law is (like) God, but on the other, the Law is also a source of angst, frustration, hopelessness and powerlessness. Drawing on the analytical framework of legal consciousness, I suggest, provides a good platform from which to explore whether the ‘haves’ come out ahead, and what coming out ahead might mean and look like to them. Equally, the ambivalence towards law shows that the ways the ‘haves’ make sense of the Law might not always be that antithetical to the way the ‘have-nots’ make sense of the Law.

Bountiful, British Columbia is Canada’s only openly polygamous community. Public discussions about Bountiful suggest that the only form of marriage practised there is polygamous, and that this is usually harmful to women and children. This article suggests that this monolithic representation of marriage in Bountiful misses the conjugal pluralism that exists in this community. Part I sets out the typical portrayal of marriage in Bountiful offered by Canadian public and political discussions. Part II contrasts this portrayal with five stories about marriage in Bountiful that the author observed or was told about while conducting field research. These stories indicate that conjugal heterogeneity is both existent and accepted in Bountiful. They also suggest that, in becoming and being a wife in Bountiful, women can experience varying degrees of choice and agency. All of this is relevant to exploring how a fuller recognition of the conjugal diversity and choices that may exist in a place like Bountiful might affect formal juridical approaches to polygamy.

The development of an integrated critical psychological jurisprudence (PJ) continues to elude researchers in theoretical and applied contexts. Indeed, the radical potential of a synthetic PJ that furthers the political aims of social change, collective good and citizen justice has yet to be sufficiently problematised or systematically reviewed in the extant literature. This article begins to address this deficiency. First, the social philosophy that informs and underscores radicalised PJ is described. This includes commentary on its underlying symbolic, linguistic, material and cultural footing. Second, several well-rehearsed theoretical strains of critical PJ are summarily presented. These strains consist of anarchism, critical legal studies, feminist jurisprudence and complex systems science. Third, a conceptual integration is undertaken that links radicalised PJ’s grounding in social philosophy with its established theoretical variants. This synthesis demonstrates the probing political project of critical PJ, especially as a humanising strategy of resistance and an evolving struggle for justice. This is a political project that seeks to de/reconstruct the images (aesthetic), narratives (epistemology), embodiments (ethic) and reproductions (ontology) at the core of its nascent critique.