News & Announcements

News!

Dear colleagues, please see below a list of activities our group has scheduled for the upcoming meeting of the Law and Society Association in Washington, DC, May 30-June 2, 2019. The activities include five excellent and timely conference sessions on lay participation in legal systems, a business meeting, and a group dinner scheduled for Friday, May 31. 

Our CRN dinner is scheduled for Friday, 05/31 at 7:30 p.m. (immediately after our business meeting) at Art and Soul Restaurant in the Liaison Washington Capital Hill Hotel, 415 New Jersey Ave., Washington. The restaurant is literally across the street from our hotel. There will be a fixed three-course menu for $65 per person. Please RSVP to Sanja (kutnjak@msu.edu) by Thursday, 05/30.

The link to the LSA conference is here.

Please plan to join us, if you can!

Valerie Hans, Sanja Kutnjak, and Mary Rose Co-organizers, CRN4, Lay Participation in Legal Systems, Law and Society Association
 

CRN/IRC Lay Participation in Law sessions and events
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting
Washington, DC. May 30-June 2, 2019

Our events include five LSA conference sessions, a business meeting, and a CRN/IRC dinner. Please join us!

Business meeting and dinner (Friday evening May 31)

CRN 04: Lay Participation in Legal Systems Business Meeting
Fri, 5/31: 6:45 PM - 8:00 PM 
Business Meeting 
Hyatt -- Room: Yosemite
 
A group dinner at a nearby restaurant (arrangements underway) will directly follow the business meeting.

Conference sessions

1. With the Jury in Mind: A Look at Evidence and Participation Decisions in Capital Punishment Trials
Fri, 5/31: 8:00 AM   9:45 AM 
1127 
Paper Session 
Friday Session 1 
Hyatt 
Room: Capitol A 
This panel explores the ways that jurors shape decisions in capital punishment cases. Some work considers the broad field of the capital trial and how the narratives and claims about death sentences line up with how it is actually practiced/"performed." A second line of work, by two different authors, considers juror selection decisions, examining patterns of peremptory use in all types of trials, as well as practices that are specific to capital cases. Finally, we consider what jury verdict forms reveal about decision making in capital cases. Federal verdict forms have a special verdict format, which lists out all mitigating an aggravating factors, as well as votes each obtained. They provide a rare instance of the jury revealing not just its verdict but components of it.

Chair
Meredith Rountree, Northwestern Law
Discussant
Shari Diamond, Northwestern U Law School/American Bar Foundation
CRN
04: Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Primary Keyword
Lay Participation, Juries and Other Forms of Lay Participation
Secondary Keyword
Punishment, Prison Studies, Sentencing, and Formal Social Control
Presentations
A Conduit for Discrimination: How Death Qualifying Conversations Enable Racism in Capital Jury Selection 
Catherine Grosso, Michigan State University College of Law
Barbara O'Brien, Michigan State University College of Law
________________________________________
Dancing with the Jury: A Field Theory of Capital Sentencing 
Sarah Beth Kaufman, Trinity University
________________________________________
Explaining Justice: How Capital Jurors Account for their Sentencing Decisions 
Meredith Rountree, Northwestern Law    
Mary Rose, University of Texas    
________________________________________
Peremptory Challenges as a Barrier to Transforming Citizens into Jurors 
Nancy Marder, IIT Chicago Kent College of Law    
________________________________________
The Capital Jury Speaks: Exploring Mitigating Factors that Jurors Offer on Verdict Forms 
Mary Rose, University of Texas    
Meredith Rountree, Northwestern Law    
________________________________________

2. The Dignity of the Argentine Jury: Procedural Challenges and Innovative Reform
Fri, 5/31: 10:00 AM   11:45 AM 
2234 
Paper Session 
Friday Session 2 
Hyatt 
Room: Regency D 
The dignity of lay participation in the Argentine criminal justice system has been reflected in the increasing spread of jury trials. The most recent addition has been the passage of the jury bill in the Province of Mendoza in October, 2018. The papers in this session analyze what this jury movement has brought to the legal systems, including standards juries bring to self defense claims, changes faced by lawyers as they face trying cases in the new systems, and thoughtful responses from influential national and international courts to features of jury trials that have dramatically altered traditional civil law procedures. Distinctive innovations introduced in Argentina include a quota approach to gender representation on the jury, providing a new opportunity to analyze the sources of dignity and legitimacy.
Chair/Discussant
Paula Hannaford-Agor, National Center for State Courts    
CRN
04: Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Primary Keyword
Lay Participation, Juries and Other Forms of Lay Participation
Presentations
Gender on the Argentine Jury 
Shari Diamond, Northwestern U Law School/American Bar Foundation    
Valerie Hans, Cornell Law School    
________________________________________
Jury Trials and Self Defense Cases in Argentina 
Aldana Romano Bordagaray, Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales y Sociales (INECIP)    
Sidonie Porterie, Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales y Sociales (INECIP)    
________________________________________
Lawyers in the Argentinian Jury Trial System: Assessing the Challenges of Adapting to a New System 
Santiago Mollis, Cornell University    
________________________________________
The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights Ruling and the Expansion of the Jury in Argentina and Latin America 
Andrés Harfuch, Asociación Argentina de Juicio por Jurados    
________________________________________
The Mixed Court of Córdoba: Recent Changes Empowering Lay Jurors 
Natali Chizik, Asociación Argentina de Juicio por Jurados / Peter Allard School of Law    
Shari Diamond, Northwestern U Law School/American Bar Foundation    
________________________________________

3. Deliberative Voices: Who Should Serve as Jurors and How Well Do They Perform?
Fri, 5/31: 2:45 PM   4:30 PM 
3093 
Paper Session 
Friday Session 4 
Hyatt 
Room: Yellowstone 
Around the world, deliberating bodies face similar challenges: how do we ensure that people are competent to serve, how do we ensure that bias in decision making is limited (or even eliminated), and how do we increase the legitimacy of results from deliberative bodies? This panel takes a crossnational look at these questions, examining challenges to seating jurors from an aging population, confronting issues of bias in selection and/or deliberation, and thinking about the jury's role in the broader criminal justice system. We also explore the causes and consequences of changes to the jury, looking at the recent decision to require only unanimous decisions from criminal juries in Louisiana.
Chair
Nancy Marder, IIT Chicago Kent College of Law    
Discussant
Mary Rose, University of Texas    
CRN
04: Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Primary Keyword
Lay Participation, Juries and Other Forms of Lay Participation
Secondary Keyword
Psychology and Law
Presentations
A New Challenge for the Spanish Jury Law: Encouraging Older Citizens to Serve as Jurors 
Regina Garcimartín, Universidad de Zaragoza    
________________________________________
Juror Racial and Ethnic Bias in Deliberative Context: Evidence from Felony Jury Trials in Four Jurisdictions 
Erin York Cornwell, Cornell University    
________________________________________
Jury Selection Reform in Canada: In Search for a More Representative or a More Controlled Jury? 
Nikolai Kovalev, Wilfrid Laurier University    
________________________________________
Jury Trials in District Courts: First Steps in Russia 
Ekaterina Khodzhaeva, Institute for the Rule of Law, European University at Saint Petersburg    
________________________________________
Legal History and Modern Society: The Movement to End Nonunanimous Criminal Juries in Louisiana 
Thomas Aiello, Valdosta State University    
________________________________________
The Elimination of Peremptory Challenges in Canada Does the Legislative Change Combat Race Based Challenges? 
Marie Comiskey, University of Toronto    
________________________________________

4. Cutting Edge Lay Participation Research
Sat, 6/1: 8:00 AM   9:45 AM 
4176 
Paper Session 
Saturday Session 1 
Hyatt 
Room: Yellowstone 
This session explores recent developments in the lay participation research. It begins with the analysis of legal advice provided online by volunteers at the McKenzie Friends. It then contains a paper with a Bayesian modeling of the juror evaluation and reevaluation of evidence, followed by a study about the power of jury instructions in the EEOC cases. The session closes with the paper presenting the results of two randomized controlled experiments in virtual trials.

Chair/Discussant
Nancy Marder, IIT Chicago Kent College of Law    
CRN
04: Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Primary Keyword
Lay Participation, Juries and Other Forms of Lay Participation
Secondary Keyword
Judges and Judging
Presentations
Caught Between Professionalism and Populism: A Big Data Analysis of Lay Participation System in China 
Xiaohong Yu, Tsinghua University    
________________________________________
Juries in Virtual Reality: How Might They Work? 
David Tait, Western Sydney University    
Meredith Rossner, London School of Economics and Political Science    
________________________________________
Linguistic and SocioLegal Analysis of Online Advice by McKenzie Friends 
Tatiana Tkacukova, Birmingham City University    
Hilary Sommerlad, University of Leeds    
________________________________________
Modeling How Jurors Update and ReEvaluate Evidence to Reach a Verdict 
Ryan Murphy, ICON    
________________________________________
The Power of Jury Instructions: Evidence from EEOC Cases 
Reid Krell, University of Alabama    
________________________________________

5. The Rise and Fall of Citizen Participation in Legal Decision Making
Sat, 6/1: 12:45 PM   2:30 PM 
2040 
Roundtable Session 
Saturday Session 3 
Hyatt 
Room: Regency A Table 10 
This roundtable will examine the causes and consequences of the rise and fall of lay participation in law. Juries and lay judges have been longstanding features of common law and civil law legal systems. However, in recent years, some countries have newly introduced lay participation to their legal systems, while others have restricted or eliminated citizens from legal decision making. The panel, composed of lawyers and scholars from the USA, Europe, and Latin America, will discuss the political, legal, cultural and other factors contributing to these shifts. Participants will weigh in on debates over the "vanishing trial" as well as the significance of legal transplants. Roundtable participants will also consider how changes in the presence or absence of citizens in law makes a difference to process, outcomes, and legitimacy.
Chair
Valerie Hans, Cornell Law School    
Discussant
Andrés Harfuch, Asociación Argentina de Juicio por Jurados    
Participants
Hiroshi Fukurai, University of California Santa Cruz    
Mar Jimeno Bulnes, Universidad de Burgos    
Richard Jolly, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law    
Richard Lempert, University of Michigan    
Martin Sabelli, Law offices of Martin A Sabelli    
 

Previous News/Announcements

Dear colleagues:

I'm happy to pass along two stories from Argentina, where several provinces have introduced trial by jury. The first is from a judge who describes the experience of presiding over her first jury trial. I think you will find it fascinating. http://www.juicioporjurados.org/2019/03/my-first-experience-as-judge-in-jury.html

The second describes a report written by our CRN/IRC colleagues Sidonie Porterie and Aldana Romano on their new research on the jury system in Buenos Aires province. Congratulations to Sidonie and Aldana on their fine work! http://www.juicioporjurados.org/2019/03/first-empirical-research-about-latin.html

Valerie P. Hans
Charles F. Rechlin Professor of Law
Cornell Law School

6/7/18-6/10/18: Law and Society Association/Canadian Law and Society Association meeting in Toronto, Ontario

Here is a link to CRN sessions at the upcoming meeting of the Law and Society Association/Canadian Law and Society Association, which will be held in Toronto on June 7-10, 2018. We have organized 5 paper sessions and a roundtable discussion on a variety of issues including comparative lay participation research, inequality and the jury, and the role of criminal justice actors in shaping who sits on juries and in determining what they hear. Speakers will be talking about lay participation developments in such countries as Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, England and Wales, France, Georgia, Japan, Norway, Russia, Spain, and the USA, offering us a range of perspectives. And for those of you attending, please come to our business meeting (Friday 6/8, 11:45 am-12:45 pm) and plan to join us for a CRN group dinner following the conference’s opening reception on Thursday (details to follow).
 

June 20-23, 2017

International Law and Society Conference, Mexico City, Mexico

Greetings! The International Law and Society Conference in Mexico City was a huge success, with a record number of participants in a world-class location. Our IRC organized a number of sessions showcasing the latest research from around the globe on lay participation in law. The first link below lists the IRC sessions. We have also posted links to materials from the individual presentations during the conference. See you in Toronto!

• Sessions on Lay Participation
• Is unanimity a nightmare? Research about decision rules and verdicts from the jury in Argentina - Mariana Bilinski and Natali Chizik (Paper:PDF)
• Is unanimity a nightmare? Research about decision rules and verdicts from the jury in Argentina - Mariana Bilinski and Natali Chizik (PowerPoint:PDF)
• Beyond a broad appeal - Vanina Almeida and Denise Bakrokar (Paper:PDF)
• Beyond a broad appeal - Vanina Almeida and Denise Bakrokar (PowerPoint:PDF)
• Success or Failure? Japan's Introduction of the Saiban-in Seido and the System of Lay Participation in Criminal Trials - Hiroshi Fukurai and Dimitri Vanoverbeke

Andrés Harfuch from Argentina sends in this comment and link: "We are in the final countdown towards the first trial by jury in Buenos Aires province (next Tuesday). In the meantime, this excellent report [about how 12 Angry Men is being disseminated in Argentina is airing] on Fox News Latino.

5/28/15-5/31/15: Law and Society Association annual meeting in Seattle, WA.

The Law and Society Association's preliminary program for 2015 is now available online. A big "thank you" to Mary Rose who served on the Program Committee for the conference. You can access the preliminary program here.

Our CRN on Lay Participation in Legal Decision Making is sponsoring 4 sessions. They are listed below. We will also hold a short business meeting after the last session on Thursday, 5/28, beginning around 6:45 pm. It conflicts with the start of the opening reception, but we will keep the meeting fairly short, and people who are interested can go to the reception together. Following the reception, those who are interested can go to a group dinner. If you'd like to be included in the CRN dinner, please email Sanja (kutnjak@msu.edu), so she can make the appropriate reservation.

We look forward to seeing you in Seattle! Valerie, Sanja, and Mary

1. CRN 04 Lay Participation Methods Roundtable
Fri, 5/29: 7:30 AM - 9:15 AM
3192
Roundtable Session
Friday Session 1
Westin Seattle
Room: Breakout 21
Jury scholars deploy multiple and multi-disciplinary research methods to examine lay participation in the legal process. As we follow our investigations in and out of courtrooms, judges' chambers, and lawyers' offices, our methodological approaches often require improvisation and combination. This workshop aims to expand discussions of jury research methods beyond the disciplinary boundaries that sometimes constrain them. Because of the dynamic nature of our research sites and diverse constitution of our scholarly audiences, this session offers a context within which to share reflections and ask questions of colleagues in adjacent disciplines. Drawing on illustrative research projects, panelists will offer insight into methods including conversation analysis, post-verdict survey work, quantitative studies of juror demographics, trial simulation research, an interactionist study of jury deliberation, and the ethnographic study of jury selection.

Chair: Anna Offit, Princeton

Discussant: Neil Vidmar, Duke Law School

Participant(s)

Catherine Grosso, Michigan State University College of Law
Paula Hannaford-Agor, National Center for State Courts
Margaret Kovera, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Barbara O'Brien, Michigan State University College of Law
Anna Offit, PrincetonMeredith Rossner, London School of Economics and Political Science
David Tait, University of Western Sydney
Nicole Waters, National Center for State Courts

2. Global Jury Practices &Innovations: A Cross-Country Exchange
Fri, 5/29: 9:30 AM - 11:15 AM
3252
Paper Session
Friday Session 2
Westin Seattle
Room: Breakout 24
In keeping with this meeting's focus on the Global North and the Global South, this panel will explore "global jury practices and innovations." We will focus on several countries, from as far north as Canada and as far south as Australia, as well as countries in between, and consider their different approaches to the jury and to lay participation. We will draw examples from the Global North and the Global South to examine how a common institution, such as the jury, can develop in different ways in different places and at different times. This cross-country exchange will help the panel members to think critically about their own jury system and which practices from other countries might work well in their own jury system and which practices might be difficult to import and why.

Chair/Discussant: Nancy Marder, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Presentations

Civil Jury Trials in Okinawa, Japan from 1964 to 1972 and Their Resurrection in Seeing Corporate and Governmental Accountabilities in a post-Fukushima Disaster era

Presenter

Hiroshi Fukurai, University of California Santa Cruz

The jury trial in Spain: the relevant role played by the Clerk of the Court

Presenter

Mar Jimeno-Bulnes, Universidad de Burgos

Non-Presenting Co-Author

Valerie Hans, Cornell Law School

The Problems of Lack of Native Representation on Juries in Canada: Exploring Whether A Jury of Peers Is Attainable and Strategies for Change

Presenter

Marie Comiskey, University of Toronto

The Theory and Reality of Lay Judges in Mixed Tribunals

Presenter

Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Michigan State University

3. CRN 04: Challenges facing the American Jury
Fri, 5/29: 1:30 PM - 3:15 PM
4646
Paper Session
Friday Session 4
Westin Seattle
Room: Breakout 21
This session will explore challenges the jury in the United States currently faces. One challenge stems from the move away from resolving disputes by trial. We will hear from a leading legal practitioner who is undertaking a lobbying and publicity campaign (e.g., the "Save Our Juries" website) to reignite use of the jury. Another challenge is the long-standing concern about who serves on juries. Two papers will explore representativeness issues, one which examines how the small samples generated for trial venires creates small disparities that are hard to litigate;the other looks at the issue of attitudinal representation. We will also have discussion of alternatives to the jury trial.

Chair: Mary Rose, University of Texas

Discussant: Paula Hannaford-Agor, National Center for State Courts

PresentationsJuries and Attitudinal Representation

Presenter

Andrew Krebs, University of Texas at Austin

Non-Presenting Co-Author(s)
Shari Diamond, Northwestern U Law School/American Bar Foundation
Mary Rose, University of Texas

Jurors and Social Media: Is a Fair Trial Still Possible?

Presenter

Nancy Marder, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Saving the Civil Jury Trial: A Review of ABOTA's Efforts

Presenter

Stephen Susman, Susman Godfrey

The Effect of Jury Service on Jurors' Trust in Police and Courts

Presenter

Liana Pennington, University of Alabama

The Power of Small Cuts: Small Group Sampling and Jury Representation

Presenter

Mary Rose, University of Texas

4. CRN 4: Listening to Lay Perspectives in Legal Systems
Fri, 5/29: 3:30 PM - 5:15 PM
6446 Paper Session
Friday Session 5
Westin Seattle
Room: Breakout 21
The papers in this session take a critical look at when the voices of lay tribunals (e.g., juries) and its members are listened to and taken seriously within the context of a broader legal system. Voices are obscured by not saying what the state or legal professionals wants to hear, or because the deliberative process is stymied by actual communication challenges.

Chair/Discussant: David Tait, University of Western Sydney

Presentations

Composition of Mixed Courts in Kazakhstan: Issues of Linguistic, Racial and Gender Representativeness

Presenter

Nikolai Kovalev, Wilfrid Laurier University

FROM ALEXANDER II TO PUTIN: THE RISE AND FALL OF RUSSIAN JURIES SINCE THE TIME OF THE CZARS

Presenter

Nazim Ziyadov, Antalya International University

Jury reform in England and Wales - unfinished business

Presenter

Penny Darbyshire, Kingston University London

Learning to judge: How Danish jurors navigate between Law and common sense during deliberation in criminal cases

Presenter

Louise Victoria Johansen, Faculty of Law

Participation in the administration of justice: Deaf citizens as jurors

Presenter

Debra Russell, University of Alberta

Co-Presenter

Jemina Napier, Heriot-Watt University

Non-Presenting Co-Author(s)
Sandra Hale, University of New South Wales
Mehera San Roque, University of New South Wales
David Spencer, Australian Catholic University

"Why States Solicit Citizen Input: The Introduction of Jury Systems in East Asia"

PresenterRieko Kage, University of Tokyo


 

CRN/IRC member Valerie Hans has been elected president of the Law and Society Association for a two-year term beginning in June 2015. Click here for the story.

5/29/14-6/1/14: Law and Society Association meeting in Minneapolis, MN.
Click here for panels and papers, Minneapolis, MN. on Lay Participation presented at 2014 Law & Society Association meeting

5/30/13-6/2/13: Law and Society Association meeting in Boston, MA.
Click here for panels and papers, Boston,MA. on Lay Participation presented at 2013 Law & Society Association meeting

6/5/12-6/8/12: International Law and Society Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii Click here for a listing of 2012 LSA panels and papers on lay participation in law

3/25/11: Popular Justice: Beyond Judges and Juries
Click here for more info

2/26/09: Takashi Maruta, Professor of Law, Kwansei Gakuin University Law School, Japan, and Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Legal Studies, Columbia University, Lay Participation in Legal Decision Making Comes to Japan: http://media.lawschool.cornell.edu/flashcom/misc/2009/hans_movie_feb09.html

Professor Maruta has been a major influence in the development of Japanese legal reforms, including the introduction of Saiban-in Seido, the Japanese reform in which six lay citizens and three professional judges decide serious criminal cases jointly. In his 2009 talk at Cornell, Professor Maruta discussed the law reform process that led to this particular form of citizen participation in legal decision making, and the special challenges that he and others confronted and continue to face in developing a strong and vibrant system of lay participation in Japan.

8/16/09: Foreigners size up lay judge system Citizens' willingness to serve contrasts with other nations that allow public participation:

Click Here to view the 2006 International Research Collaborative Newsletter (pdf format)

Click Here to view the June 24th 2007 International Research Collaborative Newsletter (pdf format)

Click Here to view the October 1st 2007 International Research Collaborative Newsletter (pdf format)

Click Here to view the 2008 Montreal Law & Society Association Meeting (pdf format)