Abstract

The concept of legitimacy is examined through a reading of Habermas’s work on communicative action, and through a reading of the opening chapters of Between Facts and Norms. The claim that legal juries function in a manner similar to a ‘parliament’ is rejected in favour of a claim that they exercise a decentred ‘particle’ of popular sovereignty. An analysis of the jury’s lifeworld origins is undertaken and, the essay then considers the democratic function of the operation of ‘jury equity’ whereby juries may produce ‘perverse’ decisions, or as described in the USA – jury ‘nullification’ whereby juries bring in verdicts that go against overwhelming evidence.