In this paper, three well-known scientific theories of legal narrative are summarized: Bennett and Feldman’s (1981) theory of legal storytelling, Pennington and Hastie’s (1986) story model of juror decision making, and Sunwolf’s (2006) decisional regret theory. Next, the use of legal narrative by participants in the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR), a public deliberation about ballot initiatives (Gastil & Knobloch, 2010) is described. Results of a content analysis of narratives observed in the transcripts of the 2010 CIR are presented. Finally, the suitability of the theories of Bennett and Feldman (1981), Pennington and Hastie (1986), and Sunwolf (2006) for explaining the use of narrative by CIR panelists is evaluated, and additional theories of narrative communication, which may shed light on significant aspects of CIR participants’ use of storytelling, are identified.
