Searching for Legal Domination: An Applied Multimedia-based Empirical Analysis of Juror Decision-making

• NCJ Number: 310623
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 228 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1999-IJ-CX-0045
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Thesis/Dissertation

Abstract

Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement argue that people are socially conditioned to mindlessly support legal dictates thereby manifesting legal domination. If true, the rule of law ideal and the law's capacity to serve as an instrument of democratic reform are jeopardized. This dissertation extends legal domination scholarship by searching for legal domination evidence in the decision-making patterns of individual mock jurors. A series of randomly interchanged computer-simulated arguments juxtaposed the following messages: a meritoriously strong legal argument against a meritoriously weak legal argument; a meritoriously strong nonlegal argument against a meritoriously weak nonlegal argument; and a meritoriously strong nonlegal argument against a meritoriously weak legal argument. Aggregate results indicate that Incorrect Unquestioned Decision-Making (IUDM) frequencies are nearly twice as high (35.8%) among mock jurors who face competing legal and nonlegal arguments, as compared to IUDM frequencies among those facing two identically typed arguments (16.4%). Further analysis reveals that Caucasians (probability = 15.9%) are less amenable to IUDM expression than minorities (probability = 22.9%), while males (probability = 24.3%) are more amenable to IUDM expression than females (probability = 14.6%). While the data reveal a negative relationship between subjects' verdict confidence levels and their IUDM amenability, no directional trends prevailed between IUDM expression and subject income or socioeconomic status. The theoretical implications and limitations of this research are discussed. (Publisher abstract provided.)