The Jury as a Translation of Democratic Participation and Political Conflict

Published date01 September 2017
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12287
Date01 September 2017
Commentary on Valerie P. Hans’s Presidential Address
The Jury as a Translation of Democratic
Participation and Political Conflict
Lee Demetrius Walker
In this response to Valerie Hans’s Presidential address, I use her “legal trans-
lating” term to argue that the implementation of liberal democratic structures
in new democracies opens new opportunities to translate the jury system into
and onto new democratic societies. While policy makers have concerns about
the strength and vibrancy of lay participation in the legal system, policy mak-
ers’ decisions to adopt trial by jury are not always democratic. Nonetheless,
the consequence of the translation of trial by jury furthers democratic devel-
opment. Using Nicaragua, Mexico, and Russia as case studies, I suggest that
one goal of policy makers who attempt to adopt trial by jury is to reduce the
discretionary power of judges who remain from the prior government. Com-
parative trial-by-jury research can contribute more to our understanding of
democratic development than prior research has indicated.
Along tradition in scholarship champions the juror as an
important manifestation of democratic participation. Some schol-
arship advances the jury as an expression of and method to instill
democratic duty and produce lay participation at the individual
level (Dalton 2008; Hans 2007; Fukurai, Knudtson, and Lopez
2009). Other scholarship views the jury as an institutional mani-
festation of deliberative democracy and as a method to facilitate
consensual democracy (Gastil et al. 2002; Smith and Wales 2000;
Hans, Gastil, and Feller 2014; Warren and Gastil 2015). Both
approaches view the jury as a mechanism to establish further
democracy through participation in democratizing societies. In
her presidential address, Valerie Hans offers the useful concept
of “legal translating” to understand further the adoption, expan-
sion and decline of trial by jury in established and developing
democracies. I use her deployment of this term to argue that the
implementation of liberal democratic structures in new democra-
cies opens new opportunities to translate the jury system into and
onto new democratic societies.
Please direct all correspondence to Lee Demetrius Walker, Department of PoliticalSci-
ence, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #305340, Denton, TX 76203; email:
Lee.Walker@unt.edu.
Law & Society Review, Volume 51, Number 3 (2017)
V
C2017 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.
517

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT