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LEGALAUTHORITARIANISM

In its broadest sense, legal authoritarianism refers to

the constellation of beliefs held about the legal system

that is relevant to juror decision making. Because

jurors enter trials with preconceived notions about

evidence, criminal conduct, and the criminal justice

system in general, understanding these beliefs allows

researchers to better understand how jurors process

information and render decisions about the case.

Furthermore, because one of the goals of the jury

selection process and voir dire is to assess attitudes

that individuals might hold that could affect their role

as jurors, the study of juror attitudes is of great rele-

vance to judges and trial attorneys, trial consultants,

and researchers of jury decision making.

Early Measures of Attitudes

Relevant to Juror Decision Making

Early attempts to measure attitudes relevant to juror

decision making relied on measures generally not

intended for those purposes. Some commonly used

measures were internal or external locus of control,

just-world beliefs, and authoritarianism. Of these con-

structs, authoritarianism was the most frequently used

in conjunction with juror decision making and had

the most success in predicting juror judgments.

Individuals scoring high on measures of authoritarian-

ism express stereotyped beliefs toward out-groups,

support conventional norms and authority, and advo-

cate harsh sanctions against deviates. These beliefs

have obvious implications to how one might react to

evidence presented at trial. And, not surprisingly,

measures of authoritarianism have been shown to

have a weak but positive relation to juror verdicts. A

meta-analysis revealed the average correlation between

authoritarianism and verdicts to be .11.

Measures of Legal Authoritarianism

As noted, measures of authoritarianism such as the

California F Scale contain items removed from a legal

context. Yet these same themes present in authoritar-

ian attitudes (e.g., the tendency to support and trust

institutionalized authority, the willingness to advocate

harsh sanctions against deviates) are telling features

about how one views the legal system. It was noted at

the outset that, broadly, any measures of legal atti-

tudes are frequently termed legal authoritarian mea-

sures. However, in a more narrow interpretation,

because authoritarian beliefs are so central to how one

views the criminal justice process, any measure of

legal attitudes relevant to jury decision making must

address these authoritarian themes to one extent or

another. As a result, each of these existing measures of

juror attitudes can be reasonably characterized as

legal authoritarianism measures.

Although it was not conceived as a measure of atti-

tudes relevant to jury decision making, Herbert L.

Packer’s identification of the due process and crime

control model provides an early example of legal

authoritarianism. Packer articulated these two per-

spectives on the criminal justice system in the influ-

ential 1968 text The Limits of the Criminal Sanction.

These perspectives reflect a series of attitudes one

holds surrounding the legal system that have important

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