‘But, today, you’ve got to be beyond reasonable doubt’: The discursive negotiation of judicial directions in mock-jury deliberations in England and Wales

Drawing on a corpus of mock-jury deliberations from England and Wales comprising 94,000 words of transcript and 10 hours of video data from 132 participants, this study employs discourse analysis – specifically interactional analysis and narrative analysis – to examine how mock jurors interpret, negotiate, and recontextualise judicial directions. The analysis identifies two interactional manifestations of juror agency: adherence to judicial directions, and transgression through lay-knowledge-based reasoning. These orientations reveal how mock jurors construct and contest interactional roles, manage intra-group dynamics, and navigate the relationship between everyday knowledge and institutional authority. Rather than depicting jurors as passive recipients of legal expertise, the study foregrounds their evidential reasoning, moral judgement, and interpretive agency. The findings contribute to discourse studies by bridging institutional discourse, epistemic agency, and the revalorisation of lay knowledge within courtroom interaction.