DESCRIPCIÓN DE CASOS DE USO DE ALTO NIVEL

The essays in this volume provide a broad survey of the rich empirical research on justice judgments. Together, they address three broad issues that we believe should be the focus of future research. One about which we have been explicit is the relationship among justice dimensions; the other two, the study of justice across disciplines, and cultural–structural interactions, flow from this discussion. In conclusion we wish to say a few words about each of these issues.

1. The Relationship among Justice Dimensions

In their essay on procedural justice Tyler and Lind hold out the enticing possibility that ‘‘global theories of justice judgment, which explain not only procedural justice phenomena, but also distributive and retributive justice phenomena, might well be within our reach’’ (Tyler and Lind, this volume, p. 78). A goal of this volume is to advance this effort. Much of our discussion has been directed at the relationship between procedure and substantive justice. As

we have noted throughout, within legal contexts procedures play a dual role of achieving substantive justice and providing the disputants with a sense of procedural justice. This is the case in situations where the primary focus is on either distribution or retribution.

When disputes come to law the procedure–substance interaction involves several steps. First, as we have seen in the Felstiner and Pettit; Howard and Scholz; and Hensler essays, law transforms disputes by determining which justice principles are to be considered and how the principles are to be applied in each case. The choice of justice principles is an issue of substantive law. The application of principles involves the law of evidence. One purpose of evidentiary rules is to increase the probability that the substantive principles will be applied accurately. Rules against the admissibility of hearsay evidence are an example. In order to achieve this goal, however, hearsay rules may impede the ability of people to ‘‘tell their story.’’ Within the group-value theory of procedural justice, an inability to tell one’s story can in turn undermine a sense of procedural justice. We must emphasize ‘‘can.’’ For it may be the case that disputants can be persuaded that the competing goals of a dispute settlement forum require substantive and procedural justice trade-offs. Indeed, some of the interactions between law- yers and clients in advance of trial can be understood in this light. We will benefit from future research that continues to move beyond examining the relative importance of perceptions of procedural and substantive justice and explores how people respond to procedures that make different trade-offs between substantive and procedural justice goals.

2. The Study of Justice across Disciplines

The first three essays in this volume review the voluminous psychological literature on subjective justice judgments, as does the final chapter by Leung and Morris. Among the social sciences, the psychological study of justice judgments is far and away the most mature. It is also relatively closed. The literature in this field only occasionally incorporates literature outside of psychology and when it does it is often philosophical and jurisprudential writing on the objective criteria of justice.

The remaining essays in this reader are not in the mainstream of psychological justice studies. They are authored by people from criminology, political science, law, and sociology as well as psychology.6 _{They vary in their use of the psychological research. Some chapters}

frequently refer to psychological findings but most rarely mention them. This state of affairs raises the question of what the various disciplines offer each other. In this essay we have offered some of our thoughts on this issue.

The psychological findings provide a foundation on which other disciplines can and should build. We can better understand what is at stake in styles of mediation, the way regulatory agencies enforce rules, and the way we handle juvenile (and adult) offenders if we are attuned to how these relate to perceptions of procedural and substantive justice. For example, the heated debate within the ADR movement over facilitative versus evaluative mediation discussed by Deborah Hensler is easier to appreciate when we understand that the choice entails a decision as to whether procedural justice or substantive justice considerations should be primary.

In turn, other disciplines have the potential to enrich psychological research. They suggest a number of hypotheses about relationships between styles of judging and the disputants’ perceptions of procedural justice. For example, if Mashaw is correct, then percep- tions of impartiality are particularly important when the decision maker employs a bureau- cratic justice style of decision making. By suggesting relationships between styles of dispute

resolution and perceptions of procedural justice, legal scholars turn our attention back toward earlier procedural justice work in the tradition of Thibaut and Walker.

Research on actual courts suggests a number of other issues that are worth exploring. For example, sociological research on disputing frequently distinguishes one-shot litigators from repeat players (Galanter, 1974). Are repeat players equally satisfied with trials in which they receive procedural but not distributive justice? Another example arises from the fact that when people do find themselves in a dispute we observe a good deal of forum shopping. Increas- ingly, businesses attempt to avoid the public courts entirely by arranging for arbitration in their contracts. Forum shopping also occurs when people choose mediation over litigation. There is now considerable evidence that in many circumstances people are more satisfied with media- tion (Tyler, 1997). Still another type of forum shopping occurs when people avoid courts al- together. Research in the United States and elsewhere suggests that individualism–collectivism affects the extent to which a legal procedure is regarded as fair (Greenhouse, 1986; Bierbrauer, 1992). What mix of procedures and substantive orientations causes litigants to choose one forum over the other, and what does this choice of fora tell us about how people trade off between procedural and substantive justice? The answers to such speculations are most likely to emerge from research work that integrates knowledge across disciplines.

3. Cultural–Structural Interactions

A multidisciplinary approach to questions of justice should advance our understanding of another important relationship, that between cultural values and structural relationships. As the closing essay by Leung and Morris indicates, an important strength of psychological research is its ability to assess the role of culture in justice judgments. In recent years, this research has begun to pay more attention to the role of social and legal structures. Many of the essays in this volume have indicated the critical importance of these factors.

The essays by Nelson and Bridges; McCorkel, Schmitt, and Hans; and Hensler discuss the importance of one’s position in the social structure on perceptions of justice.7 _{The feminist}

and minority critiques of mediation are particularly revealing. They argue that the informality of mediation may produce a sense of procedural justice but may also make it easier for the more powerful to prevail substantively. Although there is limited evidence for the proposition that minority group members and women are disadvantaged by mediation the critique itself reflects a relationship between one’s position in the society and justice judgments.

Parties with less power tend to identify less with their community and to be less committed to their society. This, in turn, has effects on justice judgments. People who identify with their community evaluate authorities more positively in terms of the fairness of their treatment. Moreover, individuals who are committed to the society rely more heavily on procedural judgments and less heavily on instrumental judgments when forming judgments about a policy or a decision. For example, a study of employee reactions to how their supervisors dealt with a work conflict found that those who identified more with the organiza- tion assessed the supervisor’s conduct in terms of how fairly they were treated (procedural justice) while those who identified less with the organization assessed the conduct in terms of whether they received a favorable outcome (distributive justice) (Huo, Smith, Tyler, and Lind, 1996).

Legal structures also play an important role in justice judgments. The essays by Feld; Hensler; and Howard and Scholz indicate ways in which the organization of a dispute settlement forum affects both procedural and substantive justice. The ‘‘constitutional domes-

tication’’ of the juvenile court is a case in point. The due process revolution altered the court’s structure by introducing lawyers and a more adversarial posture. Of equal importance, it changed the court’s focus from what was wrong with the child to what the child had done wrong. In turn, these changes in turn altered the nature of both procedural and retributive justice. Procedurally, the introduction of lawyers and the narrowing of the evidence that should be considered when adjudicating a delinquent gave less room for the delinquents to participate. Substantively, by causing the juvenile courts to focus more on what the child did and less on what the child needs, the revolution altered the definition of retributive justice. McCorkel, Schmitt, and Hans describe similar if less dramatic changes in the prosecution of sexual assault and domestic violence cases. Nelson and Bridges describe a set of cases where the plaintiffs were unable to alter the courts’ view of substantive justice in gender play inequality. Each of these examples indicates the crucial role the legal system plays in justice judgments.

4. Summing Up

As the examples at the beginning of this chapter indicate, justice concerns are pervasive. Every day we encounter numerous situations about which we make retributive and distributive justice judgments. Collectively, these judgments are an important part of our culture. Because many of these judgments are incorporated into the rules and procedures of courts and administrative agencies, the law is an embodiment of culture. Simultaneously, legal structures shape and direct our cultural beliefs about what constitutes a just outcome. This is most ob- vious with respect to questions of substantive justice. For example, the introduction of battered woman syndrome evidence in spouse abuse cases fundamentally alters the retributive justice equation in some cases. More subtle are the law’s effects on procedural justice judgments. By emphasizing adversarial adjudication, by holding themselves open to a wide variety of aggrieved parties, and by offering an individualized trial to each litigant, U.S. courts reinforce the individualism that is the hallmark of our culture. In other societies the legal system is structured to support a more communal culture (Hamilton and Sanders, 1992). In turn, these cultural orientations shape perceptions of justice in the everyday affairs of life. At the last, the study of justice, like the study of society in general, is the investigation of how culture and structure are woven together to create and sustain a social order.