Aims & Questions
This project examines the role of narratives of justice in criminal legal judgments.
Its main hypothesis is that legal judgments are underpinned by specific conceptions of justice – images, ideas, sensibilities that significantly shape understandings of what is right in each specific case, which in turn influence and condition how decisions are reached and communicated. Both aspects of the judgment – the verdict and the way in which it is conveyed – have important practical consequences for criminal justice. The research investigates three questions regarding the role of such narratives:
- How do narratives of justice shape and constrain legal judgments?
- How do these narratives impact on law’s ability to deliver justice, both in relation to specific cases and to marginalised and vulnerable social groups
- How do narratives of justice underpinning the communication of legal judgments impact on lived experiences of criminal justice