Preliminary jury instructing: a dilemmatic communication practice

IF 0.8 3区 文学 Q3 COMMUNICATION Text & Talk Pub Date : 2022-08-30 DOI:10.1515/text-2021-0115
K. Tracy
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Abstract

Abstract This study analyzes judges’ preliminary jury instruction in nine US federal civil trials. Following an overview of past and current jury instructing practices, including the role of pattern instructions, I describe the trial materials and introduce genre analysis and grounded practical theory, the two theoretical-methodological frames I use to analyze judges’ instructing. Judges’ preliminary instructions are shown to include the basic units identified in written pattern instructions. How they are performed reveals significant judge variation, and the variations make apparent difficulties built into the law that are backgrounded when solely written texts are studied. Some of these difficulties surface in judges’ description of the case and law, in orientation to note-taking, and in discussion of what is evidence and how to assess it. In concluding I argue that conceiving of high-quality jury deliberation as centrally dependent on getting instructions more comprehensible fails to recognize the fundamental judgment task that juries have. Being a good juror involves navigating communication dilemmas. Attending to the judge’s preliminary jury instructing, the paper argues, requires jurors honoring multiple principles that may be in tension.
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初步陪审团指示:一个两难的沟通实践
摘要本研究分析了美国9起联邦民事审判中法官的陪审预备指导。在概述过去和现在的陪审团指导实践(包括模式指导的作用)之后,我描述了审判材料,并介绍了类型分析和扎根实践理论,这是我用来分析法官指导的两种理论方法框架。法官的初步指示显示包括在书面模式指示中确定的基本单位。它们的执行方式揭示了法官的重大差异,而这些差异使得法律中存在明显的困难,而这些困难是单独研究书面文本时的背景。其中一些困难出现在法官对案件和法律的描述中,在记录笔记的方向上,以及在讨论什么是证据和如何评估证据时。最后,我认为,将高质量的陪审团审议设想为主要依赖于使指示更易于理解,这未能认识到陪审团所承担的基本判断任务。要成为一名优秀的陪审员,就必须应对沟通上的困境。该报认为,听取法官对陪审团的初步指示,要求陪审员尊重可能存在矛盾的多重原则。
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来源期刊
Text & Talk
Text & Talk Multiple-
CiteScore
1.70
自引率
16.70%
发文量
70
期刊介绍: Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.
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