Summary

It is quite common that commission of a crime can be attributed to a poor or distorted awareness of law. Therefore the legal education of young people should concentrate on developing their awareness of law and on educating them in the spirit of respect for the legal order and law obedience. In order to fulfil this task, it is necessary to examine the structure of legal consciousness as a whole and its individual elements separately to determine their role in the development of awareness of law.
The article deals with legal knowledge, as a part of awareness of law, in the context of Estonia and Texas. The results of a survey conducted among Estonian young people in 1990 and those of a study conducted among high school students in Texas, USA in 2001 are compared. Both studies used the same questionnaire, which was prepared in the criminology lab of Tartu State University in 1970 and which was aimed at determining legal knowledge, an understanding of ideal law and the attitude to the law in force and to compliance with legal rules.