Talk:Procedural justice

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Procedural Justice

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 September 2020 and 9 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hrbrod. Peer reviewers: Kennedydreiman, Studyhard24.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

actual definition
this article need a better definition. the one provided does not help the the uniformed understand what procedural justice actually is. the provided one describes this justice model by comparing it to others, not actually saying what it is. there are no defining characteristics listed, etc. the whole article is VERY unclear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.193.216.218 (talk) 00:28, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

These words are unclear
Is this accidental gibberish? Are these non-English words? (unsigned by User:Britonkolber 00:27, 3 March 2006)
 * This user was referring to the words "Procedural Justice" which was placed immediately above the subject line before the TOC broke the flow of text...Kenosis 15:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed mergers

 * Kindly reject proposed merge from procedural defense, as Procedural justice is not a term of art in law, at least not in the US, but rather a philosophical or meta-analytical term. Procedural defense on the other hand is, in common law deriving from UK and currently practiced in US at least, a specific class of defense in a court of law. Mccready, good to see you involved...Kenosis 16:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Kenosis, superficial googling on "procedural justice" gives the following US sites using the term in jurisprudential sense: University of Colorado, LAWRENCE B. SOLUM, University of Illinois College of Law, Dr. William Gaeddert. Although this French based source actually says PJ studies have been "conducted primarily in the legal context", it is from an international mgt studies jrnl presumably read in the US.

I have noticed you have not edited here before and that your first edit here immediately after me would appear to be incorrect. I don't susbscribe to the wikistalking definition which does not include an element of harassment, but please in future take greater care. It is also not polite to remove such tags until there is agreement to do so. I'll replace the tag so other editors can comment. My view is that each merge proposal is sensible. There are far too many similar articles floating around. Mccready 05:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Three long hard years in law school in the US (successfully) says differently. Similar sounding does not mean these are compatible threads.  Procedural justice is a separate thread, quite different from procedural law.  The former is properly classified as a class of analysis concerning the issue of just (fair) legal procedure.  Procedural law is a legal term of art that refers to the body of law which regulates procedure in the courts...Kenosis 01:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * As it happens, the proposed merge came to my attention via a link from the article on Truth, section on Truth in law-- recent histories of the relevant articles will readily verify this assertion. This proposed merge of Procedural law into this article has been sitting since January and has not been acted upon.  Now if you are asserting that it should remain pending further discussion, let's get started ...Kenosis 01:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Procedural law into this article
Procedural justice is not a term of art in law, at least not in the US, but rather a philosophical or meta-analytical term. Procedural justice is quite different from procedural law, the latter of which is a legal term of art (i.e. used and understood to have a specific meaning by practitioners of the law in actual practice). "Procedural justice" is properly classified as a class of analysis concerning the issue of just (fair) legal procedure. Procedural law is a legal term of art that refers to the body of law which regulates procedure in the courts...Kenosis 03:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Reject the article on procedural law has nothing to do with the article on procedural justice, it doesn't even have a link to it. JenLouise 22:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Procedural defense into this article
Reject proposed merge from procedural defense, as Procedural justice is not a term of art in law, at least not in the US, but rather a philosophical or meta-analytical term. Procedural defense on the other hand is, in common law deriving from UK and currently practiced in US at least, a specific class of defense in a court of law which relies on the use of procedural devices in a legal forum....Kenosis 03:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Reject for reasons stated in section above. The only thing the two articles have in common is that they both have procedural in the title. JenLouise 22:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of multiple sections of Due process into this article
This proposal should not even be here. Due process is a rich body of law and central legal principle in the US, and the article on due process properly reflects this richness. Due process is a legal term of art in the US at least, foundationally based upon two clauses in the US Consiitution, divided into two main categories, procedural due process and substantive due process. While there are vague conceptual similarities with some apparent aspects of the varied concepts of "procedural justice", there is little justifiable case to be made for merging "due process" into an article on a scattered, vaguely defined, and debatable term such as "procedural justice". Perhaps a possible future section on "due process" in this article (procedural justice) would be useful and informative along with a link to main article about due process. Similarly, a section on "procedural fairness" in Australia with a link to procedural fairness (currently redirected to procedural justice) may be genuinely useful. Similarly, fundamental justice in Canada, and perhaps other terms of art in other jusrisdictions, may be useful as well. The Australian use of "procedural fairness", incidentally, appears to me to be roughly equivalent to a synthesis of the two separate legal terms of art in the US known as fairness ot the parties and procedural due process. The use of "fundamental justice" in Canada does not, on my current understanding, appear to be synonymous with "procedural fairness" in Australia....Kenosis 16:12, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Reject Perhaps Fundamental justice, natural justice and due process can be merged with some redirecting, because they are at least the same concept, just called different things in different countries, but though they all incorporate ideas of procedural justice they are definitely not the same thing. JenLouise 22:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of multiple sections of Fundamental justice into this article

 * Reject See above. JenLouise 22:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Reject per above discussion. No interest by the editors of that article. ... Kenosis 00:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of multiple sections of Natural justice into this article

 * Reject See above. JenLouise 22:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Reject per above discussion. These are two different topics. No interest by the editors of that article either. ... Kenosis 00:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Insertion of disputed-factual-accuracy tag
The reason for the insertion of this tag has to do with the first "definitive" sentence of the intro, which currently reads as follows...Kenosis 03:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * "Procedural justice is an umbrella term for the administration of justice and legal proceedings in a procedurally fair and transparent manner, and encompasses the related terms due process (U.S.), fundamental justice (Canada), procedural fairness (Australia) and natural justice (other Common law jurisdictions)." ... 03:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately,"procedural justice" is not an umbrella term for these various other terms, nor does it "encompass" them in any sense other than perhaps dealing with these other terms in arguing the case for procedural justice in the context of public policy debate. Rather, procedural justice is a phrase referring to the concept of just formulation of law and implementation of justice in a society, or globally. It is an academic or theoretical term that can be classified as philosophical principle involving a practical analysis of how justice operates in a society, and which advocates a "just" outcome of legal, quasi-legal or administrative proceedings, and for that matter in the normal course of business within any authority-based hierarchical structure. As just one specific example among many, disproportionate enforcement against minority groups might properly be analyzed as an issue relating to "procedural justice". The link provided above by Mccready (} refers to it as a theory of civil dispute resolution, for example, which is not in any way related to a technical jurisprudential use. The definitive sentence might instead read something like "The concept of procedural justice asserts that the administration of justice and legal proceedings be done in a procedurally fair and transparent manner." .... Kenosis 03:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Removal of two tags
I have removed two of the merge tags, because the articles have nothing to do with each other, and no arguments have been put forward for 6 months regarding why they should be merged. Have left the remaining tags because at least some of the content of the articles are related (in that they actually have a link to them) and no debate has really occured. However if someone wants to merge them, perhaps they should suggest how this would happen (because I can't understand how it would happen). JenLouise 22:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Lacking citations in several places
There are research items referenced but not cited. The body of the article lacks any citation. I'd help clear this up but this is outside my field. manasclerk (talk) 22:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Citation and logic
It's not only that citation is lacking but some 'strange' ideas are the result: e.g. "The outcomes model". Would't the outcome model of procedural justice be the opposite of procedural because of focusing on outcomes and not procedures? D.S. Cordoba-Bahle (talk) 17:18, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Grimalda's comment on this article
Dr. Grimalda has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This article gives me the impression of being a badly assembled patchwork of different disciplinary perspective on procedural justice. What is more, at the substantial level I think the article misses the main point of procedural justice., and is riddled with definitions that are conflicting. I think most disciplines would agree that procedural justice should be contrasted with some forms of outcome justice. Simply stated, procedural justice assesses the fairness of the process that has led to a certain outcome. Outcome justice assesses the fairness of the outcomes that are the results of that process. In the section “Models of procedural justice” a view is held that procedures should be evaluated for the “correctness” of the outcomes they generate. I think this is a wrong view of procedural justice. In the philosophical debate - where I guess the notions of procedural and outcome justice have been originally proposed - procedural justice is associated with deontological ethics, i.e. the belief that the moral assessment should focus on the process leading to outcomes, while consequentialism holds the view that justice should only look at the final state of affairs, regardless of the process. This is expressed clearly in the entry on Deontological Ethics of the Stanford Enciclopedia of Philosophy, section 1 (1). One may think that procedural justice is sufficient to guarantee outcome justice. For instance, in his famous "A theory of Justice" (2), John Rawls based his consequentialist principle of justice, the so-called difference principle, on a process that he presented as just, i.e. the decision behind a veil of ignorance. The article seems to also espouse this view, but I don't think this is true in general. I think Rawls himself presents the simple counter-example of Russian roulette. Here the process is absolutely fair, but the outcome is hugely unequal. This tension between procedural justice and outcome justice can also be found in other works by philosophers and economists (3-5). See also another counter-example highlighting the tension between procedural justice and outcome justice in what I write below regarding the Commandment “Thou shall not steal”.

I think the article would improve greatly if the introduction made a better job in introducing the general principle of procedural justice, acknowledging that this principle has received different applications in different fields. At this moment, the introduction takes a Law study approach from the second sentence, which I think is way too narrow a focus. A much more extended discussion of procedural justice in philosophy is needed.

In what follows I make punctual comments, and then I suggest how to restructure the introduction and, if of interest, I sketch out a section describing procedural justice as viewed in (experimental) economics. These are rather provisional proposals. I am happy to develop this further.

(A)	“Procedural justice is the idea of fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources. One aspect of procedural justice is related to discussions of the administration of justice and legal proceedings. “

I have already said that the first paragraph should be much more general and not focus on a Law perspective from the second sentence.

(B)	Some theories of procedural justice hold that fair procedure leads to equitable outcomes, even if the requirements of distributive or restorative justice are not met.[3]

As I clarify below, I contest this view.

(C)	“It has been suggested that this is the outcome of the higher quality interpersonal interactions often found in the procedural justice process, which has shown to be stronger in affecting the perception of fairness during conflict resolution”.[citation needed]

Poorly-worded sentence. Moreover, it refers to the psychological and social consequences of procedural justice, rather than being a founding criterion of procedural justice. The two aspects should be clearly separated.

(D)	Section titled “In relation to communication”:

I find the title fragmentary and confusive. This section refers to management practices and it should be clearly indicated that this section takes the perspective of “justice in the workplace”. The statement

“procedural justice deals with the perceptions of fairness regarding outcomes”

clearly contradicts the initial introductory section. The passage

“Procedural justice, a subcomponent of organizational justice”

is also at odds with what stated in the introduction. I would suggest to scrap all the attempts to re-define the notion of procedural justice in this section.

(E)	Section “Perfect, imperfect, and pure”.

I would change the title into something like “procedural justice in philosophy”. I think these definitions taken from Rawls are not particularly helpful and are not really representative of Rawls’ most relevant contribution (see my point above on the veil of ignorance). I am happy to rewrite this section introducing the notion of the veil of ignorance as a way to deal with procedural justice in philosophy, which I really believe should enter this article.

(F)	Section “Models of procedural fairness”

Again, the title is confusive because clearly these “models” express the perspective from a specific field, and cannot be held as general. The opening sentence

“The theory of procedural justice is controversial, with a variety of views about what makes a procedure fair.

is too generic. I strongly contest the validity of “The outcomes model”, for the reason highlighted above. I see procedural justice and outcome justice as antithetical.

“The idea of the outcomes model of procedural justice is that the fairness of process depends on the procedure producing correct outcomes. For example, if the procedure is a criminal trial, then the correct outcome would be conviction of the guilty and exonerating the innocent. If the procedure were a legislative process, then the procedure would be fair to the extent that it produced good legislation and unfair to the extent that it produced bad legislation.[ “

This first sentence is poorly worded. What are correct outcomes? In the criminal trial case it is clear (though the outcome will be unobservable in many cases), but in the legislation case, what is good or bad legislation?

“Principally, if two procedures produced equivalent outcomes, then they are equally just according to this model.”

Why is this a problem?

“For example, many would argue that a benevolent dictatorship is not (as) just as a democratic state (even if they have similar outcomes).”

This can be much better expressed. I assume many readers are unfamiliar with what a “benevolent dictatorship” is.

“Some procedures are costly. The idea of the balancing model is that a fair procedure is one which reflects a fair balance between the costs of the procedure and the benefits that it produces. “

I contest the view that the “benefits” of a procedure can always be quantified. I really think the essence of procedural justice is that norms should be upheld regardless of their consequences.

“The group engagement model (GEM), devised by Tom R. Tyler and Steven L. Blader, incorporates past psychological theories to explain the underlying psychological processes of procedural justice. “

Procedural justice is not a sentient being, and as such cannot have psychological processes. This section emphasises the consequences of procedural justice for individual behavior in social contexts. I don’t see it as a model of procedural justice, it’s a model of individual perception of fair procedures.

I would restructure the introduction according to the following lines. I can add more references.

Procedural justice is characterized by applying criteria of justice to the process leading to an outcome, rather than to the outcome itself. Procedural justice typically focuses on prescriptive norms of behavior, rules of action or codes of conduct. It is normally contrasted with consequentialist justice, which assess exclusively the justice of the outcomes that have been generated by a process (6-8). Views of procedural justice have had a wide range of applications in many fields, such as Philosophy, Law, Political Science, Organizational Theory, Social Psychology, and Economics. Depending on the context, procedural justice may emphasize different characteristics of the process, such as its fairness – e.g. giving the parties involved equal treatment in the proceedings, its inclusiveness – e.g. giving all parties affected by the process a “voice” in the process - its transparency – i.e. releasing information on the proceedings to parties not involved in it. It may be contrasted with consequentialist theories of distributive justice – i.e. fairness in the distribution of rights or resources-, and retributive justice – i.e. fairness in the punishment of wrongs. For instance, hearing all relevant parties before a decision is made arguably satisfies minimal requirements of procedural justice. Some theories of procedural justice hold that fair procedure leads to equitable outcomes, even if the requirements of distributive or restorative justice are not met [citation in text] However, the tension between procedural justice and outcome justice has been highlighted in many works (3-5). In Philosophy, procedural justice is normally associated with deontological ethics and contrasted against consequentialist ethics. According to deontology, a choice, action, or intention can be morally upheld inasmuch as that choice/action/intention obeys some general norms of justice that concern exclusively the action itself, rather than its effects. On the contrary, consequentialism would judge a choice as right, if the final state of affairs satisfies some relevant criterion of justice, for instance utilitarianism (9). For instance, the commandment “Thou shall not murder” is a general prescriptive norm that, according to the purest form of deontology, should be obeyed in all circumstances. Consequentialism may on the contrary deviate from such a norm, if, for instance, murdering one person (e.g. a man threatening to kill many other people for no apparent reason) could save the lives of many more persons. Notions of procedural justice are particularly prominent in the administration of justice and legal proceedings. This sense of procedural justice is connected to due process (U.S.), fundamental justice(Canada), procedural fairness (Australia), and natural justice (other Common law jurisdictions).

Procedural justice in economics Economics has also become interested recently in procedural justice. In his ethnographic account of US managers’r rules of conduct, Bewley (10) observes that maintaining fairness in the environment is of paramount importance to keep group spirit in the workplace. Preferential treatment of some employees would result in other employee’s resentment and diminished effort in their jobs. The consequent drop in productivity would ultimately damage the firm. This is one reason why the most widespread form of wage-setting in companies is, within employees belonging to the same qualification level, egalitarian. This is arguably in contrast with standard economic theory, which would call for incentivizing output-dependent wage-schemes to increase overall productivity (11). Since the seminar work by Bolton, Brandts and Ockenfels (12), experimental economics has examined the relevance of procedural justice for individuals. It is beyond doubt that individuals value procedural justice. Experiments participants are willing to pay some costs to improve the procedural justice of a certain process, or simply to manifest their discontent over the lack of fairness of a certain process. For instance, individuals are prepared to pay some costs to redistribute more equally the initial chances to earn money through random lotteries (13-15).. In modified Ultimatum Games, people reject more often allocations generated by a random process that strongly favors one individual over another, in comparison to unbiased processes (12, 16). Survey analysis (17-19) and one experiment (16) confirm that people pay particular importance to having a right of “voice” in a process. Individuals are prepared to pay a considerable price to ensure that a disadvantaged individual has at least a 1% chance to gain a favorable position in a process, compared to having no chance at all (16). Theoretical contributions have been developed to rationalize these empirical results (12, 20-22). These models rest on the idea that individuals are averse to inequality in the initial expected opportunities to earn money, in a similar fashion to their aversion to inequality in their final earnings (23). According to a model, individuals are thus prepared to sacrifice outcome fairness to improve procedural fairness (21).

References (1) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/#DeoFoiCon. Citation: Because deontological theories are best understood in contrast to consequentialist ones, a brief look at consequentialism and a survey of the problems with it that motivate its deontological opponents, provides a helpful prelude to taking up deontological theories themselves.

(2) Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (rev ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

(3) Diamond, P. (1967). Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparison of utility: A comment. Journal of Political Economy, 75(5), 765–766.

(4) Machina, M.J., 1989. Dynamic consistency and non-expected utility models of choice under uncertainty. Journal of Economic Literature 27, 1622–1668. (5) Trautmann, S., & Wakker, P. (2010). Process fairness and dynamic consistency. Economics Letters, 109(3), 187–189. •	(6) Scheffler, S (ed.). (1988). Consequentialism and Its Critics: Oxford Readings in Philsophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. •	(7) Broome, J., 1991. Weighing Goods, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. •	(8) Pettit, P., (ed.), 1993. Consequentialism, Aldershot: Dartmouth. •	(9) Sen, A., and Williams, B. (eds.), 1982. Utilitarianism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (10) Bewley, T. F. (1999). Why wages don't fall during a recession. Harvard University Press. (11) Lazear, E. P. (2000). The power of incentives. The American Economic Review, 90(2), 410-414. (12) Bolton, G. E., Brandts, J., & Ockenfels, A. (2005). Fair procedures: Evidence from games involving lotteries. Economic Journal, 115(506), 1054–1076. (13) Karni, E., Salmon, T., & Sopher, B. (2008). Individual sense of fairness: An experimental study. Experimental Economics, 11(2), 174–189. (14) Krawczyk, M., & Le Lec, F. (2010). Give me a chance! An experiment in social decision under risk. Journal of Experimental Economics, 13, 500–511. (15) Becker, A., & Miller, L. (2009). Promoting justice by treating people unequally: An experimental study. Experimental Economics, 12(4), 437–449. (16) Grimalda, G, Kar, A., and Proto, E. (2015), Procedural Fairness in Lotteries Assigning Initial Roles in a Dynamic Setting, Experimental Economics, online first, 1-23. DOI: 10.1007/s10683-015-9469-5. (17) Anand, P. (2001). Procedural fairness in economic and social choice: Evidence from a survey of voters. Journal of Economic Psychology, 22(2), 247–270. (18) Keren, G., & Teigen, K. (2010). Decisions by coin toss: Inappropriate but fair. Judgement and Decision Making, 5(2), 83–101. (19) Konow, J. (2003). Which is the fairest one of all? A positive analysis of justice theories. Journal of Economic Literature, 41(4), 1188–1239. (20) Karni, E., & Safra, Z. (2002). Individual sense of justice: A utility representation. Econometrica, 70, 263–284. (21) Krawczyk, M. (2011). A model of procedural and distributive fairness. Theory and Decision, 70(1), 111–128. (22) Trautmann, S. T. (2009). A tractable model of process fairness under risk. Journal of Economic Psychology, 30(5), 803–813. (23) Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817–868."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Grimalda has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Gianluca Grimalda & Anirban Kar & Eugenio Proto, 2012. "Everyone Wants a Chance: Initial Positions and Fairness in Ultimatum Games," Working Papers 2012/21, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellon (Spain).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 20:06, 24 September 2016 (UTC)