The Ecological Validity of Jury Simulations: Is the Jury Still Out?

Despite the need to assess the ecological validity of jury simulation research before generalizing from simulations to the behavior of real jurors, surprisingly little jury research has directly addressed issues of validity. The present paper reviews the extant research on two aspects of the validity question—specifically, research that has compared different samples of mock jurors, and research that has manipulated the medium of trial presentation. In addition, jury simulation research published in the first 20 years of Law and Human Behavior is analyzed with respect to these variables. The majority of simulations used student-jurors and presented the trial in written form. Additionally, the methodology of simulation research has actually become less realistic over time. However, this trend is not necessarily cause for concern, as a review of the literature reveals little research that has obtained differences between different mock juror samples or different trial media.     

Doing Rawls Justice: An Experimental Study of Income Distribution Norms

Distributive justice has been the focus of political theory with the postwar rise of the social welfare state, and Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971) is arguably the most important work of political philosophy during that period. Parallel to this theoretical literature is a body of empirical research into distributive justice. We offer a synthesis of the theoretical and empirical approaches with an experimental study of how individuals use allocation principles in making judgments concerning income distribution under conditions of strict impartiality. Our experiment is designed in part to examine the extent to which they prioritize them consistent with Rawls' theory. We find that distributive justice judgments are complex but structured, with individuals tending to use several principles simultaneously and weighing them according to predictable factors, with sex and race being particularly important. We also find that individuals use several strategies in using competing allocation principles and that a considerable minority prioritize them consistent with a Rawlsian maximin strategy.     

South Africa: The politics of racial terminology

Survey of racial terminology employed in southern Africa since 1652 is discussed     

The Impact of Job Characteristics on Private Prison Staff: Why Management Should Care

The number of private prisons run by corporate security businesses has increased rapidly throughout the past two decades. There has been a parallel increase in literature, both pro and con, comparing the efficiency and effectiveness of private and public prisons; however, private prison staff has been largely ignored. OLS regression analysis of a survey of 160 employees at a Midwestern private prison facility showed that the job characteristics of job stress, supervision, and job variety were far more important than personal characteristics of race/ethnicity, gender, age, tenure, education and position in influencing staff job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Specifically, job stress had the largest impact on job satisfaction, while quality of supervision had the greatest impact on organizational commitment.     

The Truth about Interviewing Elites

This article reviews the small literature on how to interview elites. It examines the veracity of three sets of assumptions embedded in the literature: about the nature of truth; dishonest respondents; and sophisticated but powerless researchers. It suggests ways forward, including ensuring that researchers place their work in more explicit philosophical and reflexive frameworks. This would result in more rigorous research and improved pedagogy.