Procedural Justice As a Contested Concept: Sociological Remarks on the Group Value Model

The group value model by Lind and Tyler has had a major impact on procedural justice research. After critically examining the model, the author proposes that its underlying idea be reformulated at a more general level. The theory of autopoietic systems provides the background for an attempt to depict procedural justice as a mode for the self-description of social systems, a concept that the author relates to procedural structures that have been empirically shown to exist. Two cases from the field of genetic engineering are cited in this context.