Can Juries be Lost in Translation?

• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12286

Commentary on Valerie P. Hans’s Presidential Address

Can Juries be Lost in Translation?

Mary R. Rose

Amidst all the excitement that a focus on juries generates in

me, and despite the admiration I feel for Professor Hans and

other colleagues who have given significant time and energy to

cross-national work, Valerie Hans’ address also provokes in me a

keen awareness of the current limits of the literature on juries.

The literature has quite a bit of research on the “branches” asso-

ciated with juries: the way juries’ decisions agree (or not) with

others decision makers (Eisenberg et al. 2005; Kalven and Zeisel

1966) or with reason (Vidmar 1995); narrative decision-making

strategies that jurors use (Pennington and Hastie 1986), the link

between juries and other civic participation (e.g., Gastil et al.

2008; Musick et al. 2015), group decision making dynamics and

social influence (e.g., York Cornwell and Hans 2011; Sommers

2006), racial biases in jury processes (Fukurai, Butler, and Krooth

1993; Clair and Winter 2016), and political theory surrounding

deliberation effects (e.g., Abramson, 1994; Gastil et al. 2008).

However, Professor Hans’s essay reminded me that scholars

seem less likely to talk about the tree itself. That is, jury scholars

seem strikingly less clear about a basic question: what makes a

jury a “jury”? Are some features of a jury necessary in order to

call it a “jury,” and when has a body been altered or “translated”

so much that its core functions and capabilities threaten to be lost

in the process? I am no expert in international research, and I

I am honored to write a commentary on Valerie Hans’s Presidential Address, I heard

the address while seated not far from a table full of cheering Argentinians who are in the

midst of advocating for, launching, and supporting a nascent jury system in the several

provinces that Professor Hans describes. As she writes, through sometimes-unexpected cir-

cumstances and invitations, Professor Hans has engaged with these and other collaborators

and has set up lasting institutions that support and encourage the spread of lay participa-

tion in legal decision making. Working alongside in-country leaders and scholars, and capi-

talizing on mechanisms within the Law and Society Association, Valerie Hans is literally

changing the world in this area.

Please direct all correspondence to Mary R. Rose, Associate Professor, Department of

Sociology, University of Texas, 305 East 23rd Street, A1700, Austin, Texas, 78712-1086;

email: mrose@austin.utexas.edu.

Law & Society Review, Volume 51, Number 3 (2017)

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