Perceptions of jury duty: Satisfaction and overall impression

A jury service exit questionnaire that was designed to measure satisfaction with and overall impression of jury duty was administered to a saturation sample of 2,947 respondents by court clerks serving District or Circuit courts in nine counties in southeastern Michigan. For those sworn to jury duty, global satisfaction with the jury experience is found to be influenced by perceptions of trial characteristics and by the extent of participation in the jury system. The significant predictors of overall impression with the jury system are respondent age, being elected jury foreman, and deliberating a criminal rather than civil case. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1985 Meetings of the North Central Sociological Association. This research was funded in part by the Michigan State Supreme Court. We acknowledge the contributions made to this paper by members of the Sorrento Seminar and by anonymous reviewers. Patrick C. Easto provided the inspiration for writing the first as well as the final draft of this paper.     

NORMATIVE POLITICAL SCIENCE

The bad news is that critics of the quantitative movement in policy and political science are right (so far). Widely accepted quantitative models of politics promote cynicism and counter-productive uses of government power. Mainstream social science provides a perverse basis for policy analysis. The good news is that there is no sound scientific reason for the schism between so called "empirical" and "normative" theories of politics. Traditional theories of politics, which show how government power can be used to serve the public interest, can be quantified and tested as empirical theory. The resulting scientific normative theory provides a constructive foundation for policy analysis.