Introduction: Procedural Justice, Law and Policy

• Published date: 01 January 1998
• Date: 01 January 1998
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9930.00040
• Author: Stefan Machura

Introduction: Procedural Justice, Law

and Policy*

STEFAN MACHURA

Over the last few years, procedural justice has become one of the most debated

fields in social science and law. Modern thinking about law, democracy and

public policy inevitably leads to a consideration of appropriate procedures.

Images of such procedures are culturally bound and also formed by individual

cognition. The word ``fair'' seems to encompass the most desired features of

procedures.

I. THE FOUR STUDIES PRESENTED

This volume presents four studies which, using different methods and

different theoretical concepts, deal with main problems of the procedural

justice debate. Susanne Karstedt's article (1998) centers around public per-

ception of procedural justice in a specific political situation: the lustration

of former elites and their followers after the breakdown of their regime.

Karstedt portrays Germany as an example, which has experienced such a

process twice in this century: once after World War II and again after the

end of the communist German Democratic Republic. This process was

governed by political powers which came from outside the old political

entity. In her analysis, Karstedt uses the same psychological theory as does

Jo-Anne Wemmers in her article. Recent developments of victim policy in

The Netherlands have been investigated by Wemmers (1998). Her focus is

on victims who had experienced their treatment during the run of criminal

investigations and proceedings. Karstedt and Wemmers use quantitative

data analysis, whereas the third contributor employs the case study method.

Founded on the gate-model of political decision making, Ben Crum (1998)

addresses the extend to which the political and legal structures of Great

Britain and Germany are able to deal with conflicts on different levels.

Crum uses examples of school policy. In the final contribution, Alfons Bora

(1998) reflects upon proprieties of public hearings in administrative

* Address correspondence to Dr. Stefan Machura, Lehrstuhl fu

Èr Rechtssoziologie und Rechts-

philosophie, Juristische Fakulta

Èt, Ruhr-Universita

Èt Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany. His

e-mail address is STEFAN.MACHURA@juramail.zrs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1998 ISSN 0265±8240

#Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK,

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.