Citizen Representation and the American Jury

I have just posted my newest draft paper to SSRN.  It is co-authored with David L. Ponet, a fellow political theorist and is available for download here.  Here's the abstract:

Participatory and deliberative democrats are increasingly relying on groups of “lay” citizens to have a direct hand in policy formation and consultation. However, these theorists have not adequately addressed how these “citizen representatives” should be selected and how their activities can be truly deemed “representative”. We find these lacunae unsurprising in light of continued confusion in the representation literature about the relationship between democracy and representation – and the continued lack of effort to bridge normative theories of political representation with sensitivity to real institutional practices of representation. Accordingly, we look at a particular institutional manifestation of democratic representation – the American jury system –and tease out a theory of “citizen representation” that highlights six central desiderata: deliberation, impartiality, cross-sectionality, civic responsibility, legitimacy, and indirect accountability. An analogy that proves rich upon examination, we find that the jury’s implicit theory of citizen representation has much to recommend to proposals and practices of citizen representation in other institutional settings.

For now, we are expecting to publish this article in a political science journal rather than a law review.  All comments are welcome.  My previous work on the jury from this year is available here and here.