Justice as a Phenomenon of Order: Notes on the Organization of a Jury Deliberation

This paper concerns a jury and how it develops and uses a notion of "justice" in the course of deciding whether to convict or acquit a criminal defendant. Because "justice", as a concern for a person's due allotment of benefits and burdens, has such a venerable history in law, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines, we wish to review its traditional treatment, at least within the social sciences. Our approach to the topic is very different. It may help develop a proper theoretical understanding of justice in sociology, but only if our enterprise is understood in relation to the traditional treatment and on its own terms. In relation to the tradition, we argue that sociology has not yet found justice as a real social phenomenon, but only presumptively invoked the concept as an abstraction and as a guide to empirical investigation. On its own terms, our investigation is an attempt to recover justice as a "phenomenon of order" (Garfinkel, 1988). Thus, as a meaningful and usable concept in a situation where members engage in the practicalities of making a decision, justice exists in the concreteness of their locally produced and naturally organized actions.