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Procedural Justice in Felony Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jonathan D. Casper ,
Tom Tyler  and
Bonnie Fisher
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Abstract

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Recent research on the determinants of litigant satisfaction has consistently found that abstract evaluations of the justness of case outcomes and of the fairness of the case disposition process contribute significantly to outcome satisfaction, independent of the favorability of the outcome itself. Most such findings have been produced either in laboratory settings using college student subjects or in survey research involving litigation in which the stakes are relatively small. As a consequence, skepticism has been expressed about whether procedural and distributive justice make a difference in serious civil or criminal cases. Reanalyzing data gathered in a previous panel study of defendants charged with felonies in three cities, we argue that the evidence suggests important effects for procedural and distributive fairness, even among a sample of litigants who share few attributes with college student populations and who are involved in litigation in which the stakes are high. The implications of these findings for case disposition processes such as plea bargaining and alternative dispute resolution techniques are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 483 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This study involves reanalysis of data originally collected under a grant from the National Institute of Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice (75-NI-99-0027). Support for the work reported here was provided by the American Bar Foundation and the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research of Northwestern University. For helpful comments on this paper, we wish to thank Phillip Schrodt, Jeanne Brett, Max Bazerman, Allan Lind, Deborah Hensler, Roger Myerson, and John Donohue.

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