Authority And Obedience: Procedural Justice In Social Psychology Perspective

As American social psychologist Taylor says,“The key to legal authorities’ effectivenessis their ability to make laws and decisions that will be followed by the public”. Thus, the coremeaning of the effective operation of the criminal justice system exists in making litigant andpublic to really accept the outcome of the judiciary in a criminal case. Nowadays, theoperation of our criminal justice status unsatisfactory: people are discontent with theadministration of justice, the overall evaluation of social justice is not high, the judicialcredibility is insufficient, the authority of criminal justice precarious. In the criminal justicereform process that stressed “justified”, justice discourse has got more and more attention.Generally speaking, there are two dimensions to talk about the justice-abstract or specific. Thetraditional research of “procedural justice” in theoretical circles mainly emphasizes the valueof procedures and studies the content of procedural justice with the respect of philosophy oflaw and norms of law. They all belong to the abstract dimension. In contrast, the cross-overstudy in social psychology and law puts emphasis on studying procedural justice throughempirical research and the effect of procedural justice on individual acception of judicialdecision in each case, which belongs to the specific dimension. Thus，criminal justice in thecontext of social psychology can make compensation for the deficiency of traditional researchin this area, and perfect its investigation with the respect of the actuality. Therefore this articlemakes a study of criminal procedural justice in the context of social psychology, analysischina criminal justice phenomenon,and explore the way to build china’s authority criminaljustice system.This paper starts with two of the most influential theories:“a theory of procedure”represented by John.W. Thibaut, and “the meaning of procedural justice” represented byTom.R. Tyler. The former which under the guidance of “social exchange theory”, proposed atheory of procedure that selects procedure by the destination of dispute resolution to realizejustice; the later which design questionnaire under the guidance of Leventhal’s six criterionson procedural justice, identifies the meaning of procedural justice by inquiring “how would people react to their experiences with legal authorities”, and clarifies it with “the group-valuemodel”.The article is divided into four parts:The first part is an introduction, which mainly introduce the object and methods of socialpsychology study, the subject of the cross-over study in social psychology and criminal justice,our law psychology research situation and the development of foreign studies aboutprocedural justice in social psychology area.The second part describes in detail the theory of procedure represented by John.W.Thibaut, which compose two experiments of “objective procedural justice” and theexperiment about “subjective procedural justice”. Its key point is: adversary procedure havemore ability to eliminate the bias of judges, and have more chance to realize the justiceobjective of dispute solution, for the reason of giving process-control to the parties.The third part describes in detail the meaning of procedural justice represented byTom.R. Tyler, which compose the questionnaire design, data analysis and the interpretation ofpsychology theory of the Chicago study. Its key point is: public in the contact with legalauthorities will evaluate their experience by assessment of “the motives of authorities, honesty,bias, ethicality, representation, the accuracy of decision and the opportunity ofcorrectability”,and from this, they will decide to whether obey the authorities and theirdecisions.The forth part mainly analysis the significance of the application of social psychologyinto the context of china criminal justice, which compose the methodology breakthrough andthe realization of responsive justice, civilians justice, specific justice, and authority of justice.Then the article propose the direction of effort to build china’s authority criminal justicesystem.This paper points out, because of the negligence of the relation between jurisprudence associal science and other subject, the negligence of legal phenomenons’ social nature, thenorms of law research always fall into too rigid and unrealistic position. Our traditionalresearches on the procedure-value theory remain stay at the theoretical level of “speculate” but no demonstration of empirical deta. Our traditional researches on the procedural justicetheory always be so limited to philosophy of law and jurisprudence to investigate in theabstract dimension that they are difficult to react to the criminal justice requirement ofspecific justice. So I maintain that we can try to use the laboratory study of social psychologyin the context of our criminal justice, and explore the plan to build our authority criminaljustice system with such key words as “adversary or inquisitorial procedure”,“independenceor control of judge”,“the reform of judicial hierarchy”,“the construction of professionalethics”.Social psychology research bases on the analysis of “variables affecting individual ofevents”, identifies and explains the content of specific justice principle. As to the criminaljustice reform of towarding responsive justice, civilian justice, and the social requirement ofspecific justice and authority justice of criminal justice, maybe we can prefigure, in the future,the application of social psychology in the context of criminal justice will become themainstream of law research area in empirical research on procedural justice.