Dimensions of Rights Consciousness

Commenting on David Engel's Article, this Comment responds particularly to Engel's formulation of horizontal and vertical axes as a metaphor for the ways different analytical approaches to law and legal consciousness potentially yield recombinant interpretive questions. Pursuing Engel's concerns with the embeddedness of local norms and social relations in state-based and global legal processes, this Comment suggests expanding the two dimensions of Engel's matrix to four, so as to highlight the relevance of social distance and temporality in the differing accounts of law he assays, and in appreciating their stakes. In so doing, this Comment situates Engel's essay as a novel and timely critical engagement with theories of the cultural relativity of law.