02388     2200289   4500001002100000005001500021035002000036008004100056020001900097041000800116082001100124084001700135100002200152245007500174260005700249300003000306520152000336650004101856650002501897650002601922990002501948990002501973990002501998990002502023990002502048990002502073INLIS00000000000923520221108093217  a0010-0520009235221108                |          | eng    a978-0674005563  aeng  a347.73  a347.73 FIN c0 aFinkel, Norman J.1 aCommonsense Justice : Jurors’ Notions Of The Law /cNorman J. Finkel  aCambridge, Mass. :bHardvars University Press,c2001  a390 p. ; 25 cm. ;c25 cm.  aFor the first time in our history, U.S. prisons house over a million inmates, enough to populate a city larger than San Francisco. Building prisons is the new growth industry, as the American public reacts to a perceived increase in violence and politicians take a hard line toward crime. But this eagerness to construct more prisons raises basic questions about what the community wants and will tolerate and what the Supreme Court will sanction. In this timely book, Norman Finkel looks at the relationship between the "law on the books," as set down in the Constitution and developed in cases and decisions, and what he calls "commonsense justice," the ordinary citizen's notions of what is just and fair. Law is an essentially human endeavor, a collection of psychological theories about why people think, feel, and behave as they do, and when and why we should find some of them blameworthy and punishable. But is it independent of community sentiment, as some would contend? Or, as Finkel suggests, do juries bring the community's judgment to bear on the moral blameworthiness of the defendant? When jurors decide that the law is unfair, or the punishment inappropriate for a particular defendant, they have sometimes nullified the law. Nullification represents the jury's desire not to defeat but "to perfect and complete" the law. It is the "no confidence" vote of commonsense justice refusing to follow the path the law has marked out--and pointing to a new path based on what seem to be more just grounds. 4aLaw --United States --Public opinion 4aJury --United States 4aJustice; Common sense  a22457/MKRI-P/XI-2011  a22458/MKRI-P/XI-2011  a22458/MKRI-P/XI-2011  a22457/MKRI-P/XI-2011  a22457/MKRI-P/XI-2011  a22458/MKRI-P/XI-2011