The Generality of Procedural Justice

Abstract

The studies discussed in the preceding chapter show that procedural justice phenomena are ubiquitous in law and dispute resolution. Given this finding, it seems reasonable to ask whether phenomena such as the process control effect or the procedural justice enhancement of support for legal institutions are instances of a general human response to social decision-making procedures. Might not people react in much the same way to the myriad procedures that exist in business organizations and political institutions, or, for that matter, in personal relationships, as they do to legal procedures? Or are the procedural justice effects documented above unique to law and dispute resolution? In this chapter and those that follow we consider the substantial body of evidence favoring the first of these alternatives, that procedural justice phenomena appear in much the same form in a wide variety of social settings.