2. Guiding function. We are building a socialist legal system with China characteristics that is compatible with the socialist market economic system, which is a very arduous task. Because before the founding of New China, the foundation of socialist legal system was quite poor. After the founding of New China, especially since the reform and opening up, although we have accelerated the pace of socialist legal system construction, it still does not meet the requirements of the times. Many laws and regulations we formulated in the past have not adapted to the ever-developing objective material living conditions, especially under the special historical conditions of establishing a socialist market economic system, it is more urgent to speed up the construction of socialist legal system, especially to speed up legislation and strengthen law enforcement (including justice). The premise of legislation is the need of objective conditions, including both the development level of productive forces and the current situation of public legal consciousness. Laws are made to regulate people's behavior and adjust people's related social relations. If people's legal consciousness is low, the law can't be well implemented and enforced, and even in the process of implementation, it will increase the implementation cost of the law. The level of college students' legal consciousness is closely related to the implementation of the law. If college students can have a higher level of legal awareness, it will undoubtedly greatly promote the implementation of the law, and then drive and promote the support of the whole society for the implementation of the law. From this perspective, college students' legal consciousness has a guiding function. This positioning is relative to the public.
3. Evaluation function. The implementation of the law includes two aspects: observing the law and applying the law. As far as abiding by the law is concerned, the role of legal consciousness mainly means that the public regards the law as an integral part of their lives, consciously acts according to the law and consciously safeguards the dignity of the law. As far as the application of law is concerned, the function of legal consciousness is mainly to supervise the judicial activities of specialized agencies and ensure the effective, fair and timely implementation of laws. Here mainly embodies the evaluation function, that is, to make value judgments on the right or wrong behavior, whether the law is just and whether the law is effectively implemented, thus affecting the process of legal construction. Of course, because college students lack the ability to judge and distinguish complex things, they will inevitably make wrong judgments when making value judgments, thus affecting the evaluation function of college students' legal consciousness.
4. Standardize functions. The purpose of the ruling class in making laws is to regulate people's behavior with special codes of conduct such as laws, and to adjust customs, morality, policies and other codes of conduct with laws, but not to adjust or adjust invalid social relations between people. The realization of the purpose of law depends not only on the coercive power of the state, but also on the general improvement of public legal consciousness. Because the national coercive force is only an external force, legal awareness is the internal driving force to achieve legal purposes. According to the universal principle of Marxism, internal cause is the decisive factor of the development of things. The construction of modern legal consciousness of contemporary college students can make them consciously regulate their words and deeds according to the will of the broad masses of the people embodied in the law.