Citizens’ Juries: A Time-Tested Approach to Deliberative Policymaking

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the citizens’ jury, a distinctive public participation model wherein a small, demographically stratified group of citizens is convened to learn about, discuss, and deliberate on pressing policy questions. After briefly tracing the origins of citizens’ juries in the early 1970s and Ned Crosby’s seminal work refining the method at the Center for New Democratic Processes, the chapter explains key design elements—including random recruitment, a learning program featuring expert witnesses, neutral facilitation, and an emphasis on informed output. It explores the operational demands of convening a citizens’ jury, underscoring the requirement of substantial resources, thoughtful commissioning, and nuanced remit-setting to ensure an authentic, productive process. Attention is paid to the challenges of ensuring representation, mitigating biases, maintaining independence, and balancing thorough deliberation with practical constraints. The chapter concludes by highlighting how citizens’ juries can enrich policymaking through robust, inclusive dialogue, illustrating the method’s capacity to identify novel policy solutions, and, ultimately, situating citizens’ juries within the broader ecosystem of democratic practices.