Legitimising the courts and enhancing community cooperation: Testing the importance of procedural and distributive justice

Research suggests that the perceived legitimacy of an authority can influence whether people are likely to engage in cooperative and compliant behaviours. As the courts are an institution that relies heavily upon community involvement, it is important to consider what factors shape the courts’ own legitimacy. One perspective, known as, the group value model argues that distributive and procedural justice can shape the perceived legitimacy of an authority. Drawing from this, the current study (N = 231) used a hypothetical news report to experimentally manipulate elements of distributive and procedural justice within a murder trial. As predicted, the fairness of the trial verdict (distributive justice) influenced perceptions of the courts’ legitimacy. However, unexpectedly, the fairness of the trial (procedural justice) and the amount of voice jurors had (procedural justice), was not important. Our results suggest members of the community are purely instrumental. In others words, it matters to the community that the right outcome is achieved, not that procedures are fair for defendants, complainants and jurors. Importantly, our study has contributed to theory by extending our understanding of procedural and distributive justice. There are also a number of practical implications, including, the need to minimise the occurrence of wrongful convictions and better educate the community about the courts’ ability to achieve distributive justice.