Originally from:

AAA Handbook on Commercial Arbitration, Third Edition

CHAPTER 1

JUDGING ARBITRATION: THE FINDINGS OF PROCEDURAL JUSTICE RESEARCH

Deborah R. Hensler

I. Introduction

Procedural justice research began in a laboratory about many years ago when social psychologist John Thibaut and lawyer Laurens Walker teamed up to study individual preferences for different forms of dispute resolution.  Initially, they focused on preferences concerning different styles of adjudication. Using conventional psychological experimentation methods and student research subjects who played the role of the disputing parties, they investigated whether individuals preferred an adversarial process like the one used in the United States or an inquisitorial process similar to that used in many European courts for deciding criminal cases. 

Thibaut and Walker found that subjects assigned the role of defendant perceived the adversarial procedure to be fairer than the inquisitorial approach.