Exploring (il)legality of an action and public order

This short paper examines whether the legality or illegality of a behaviour is linked with is evaluation in terms of public order and explores the implications of this relationship for understanding law, hegemonic social representations, and symbolic power. Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of law as a field through which symbolic power is institutionalized, this paper asks a question about the role of law in shaping the social representation of public order. To address this question, the data from the previously published study on social representation of public order (Palíšek et al., 2025) were re-analysed, focusing on participants’ evaluations of legal and illegal scenarios in relation to public order.