Many countries around the globe rely on ordinary citizens, untrained in the law, to decide the guilt or innocence of their fellow citizens. Some countries use all-layperson juries, while others use mixed tribunals or mixed courts in which professional judges and lay citizens work together to decide a case. Still other countries use lay magistrates or lay judges working alone or on panels. This book provides a view of the different forms of lay participation and the ways in which they are evolving. It offers a comprehensive picture of how some countries have made recent and remarkable advances toward lay decision-making, while others have a long-standing form of lay participation that is well accepted in that country. Still other countries have faced challenges with lay participation and have opted for limiting the scope of lay legal decision-making or even abolishing it. The organization of this book illustrates that lay participation in a country is not fixed in stone; lay participation is being advanced, reinforced, or replaced in countries around the world. These shifting responses to lay participation suggest the prime importance of stepping back and taking a global perspective.

This chapter provides a snapshot view of the different ways that 195 countries around the world use lay participation in legal decision-making. We collected information from a variety of sources, including new expert surveys, legal research, and existing empirical evidence, to determine which countries use lay citizens as legal decision-makers in criminal cases and how they use them. Approximately two-thirds of the world’s countries use some form of lay participation, and the most commonly used forms are juries and mixed tribunals. The use and form of lay participation vary by geography and by the legal tradition of the country. The majority of countries in Africa, Australia and Oceania, Europe, and North America use some form of lay participation in their legal systems. Countries with common-law or customary-law legal traditions are most likely to rely on lay citizens as legal decision-makers. The widespread use of lay participants around the globe underscores the importance of studying this phenomenon. This chapter provides a baseline against which future studies in lay participation can be measured.

A quarter-century has elapsed since the introduction of the Jury Law (Ley del Jurado) in Spain in 1995. This chapter describes trial by jury and its functioning over this period and also considers its chances for survival in the future. The chapter begins with the main features of the Spanish jury and includes changes to the Spanish judicial system after the introduction of jurors. This chapter also provides an overview of the current state of jury trials in Spain, including new statistics and judicial practices. Controversial and high-profile jury trials illustrate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the jury’s performance in Spain over the past 25 years.

This chapter argues that contemporary debates about the constitution and expansion of mixed courts in Norway reveal a tension in attitudes toward lay participation in the legal system. On the one hand, lawyers and laypersons in Norway evince confidence that professional legal actors can effectively collaborate with jurors to reach verdicts. On the other hand, both laypersons and attorneys worry that when it comes to the prosecution of some crimes – particularly sex crimes – laypersons cannot be relied upon to do justice. After offering an overview of Norway’s shifting jury system, the chapter argues that judicial interventions in the jury system have contributed to its gradual loss of legitimacy. Drawing on empirical research, I argue that critiques of rape prosecutions have both amplified and sharpened the stakes of critiques of lay participation more broadly, though – at least for the moment – mixed courts of lay and professional judges are perceived to remedy the shortcomings of all-layperson juries.

Lay participation is part of Germany’s legal system. Lay assessors, who are ordinary citizens, serve alongside professional judges on mixed tribunals. This chapter focuses on criminal courts that use lay assessors. We find that lay assessors indeed contribute to the work of the German criminal courts. Lay assessors are most active during deliberations, especially if the presiding professional judge accepts them as partners with equal rights. Most laypersons report a positive experience, and indeed, most professional judges sitting on mixed tribunals support lay participation. German court culture encourages lay assessors and professional judges to reach a consensual decision rather than taking a formal vote. The chapter suggests several reforms that would enable lay assessors to play a more active role on mixed tribunals.

Now that Córdoba has had more than a decade of experience with lay participation in criminal trials, it offers the opportunity to analyze whether the institution of mixed tribunals has fulfilled the expectations held by those who promoted this innovation. This review of the Córdoba experience with mixed tribunals summarizes the main findings of a research program initiated in 2008. It is focused on three issues: the differences between jury and judge decisions and the actual levels of lay participation obtained when judges and juries sit and deliberate together; the tensions between the approaches of professional judges and the social demand for penal harshness associated with fear of crime; and the contribution of lay participation in the courts toward legitimizing the judiciary, a key issue in a society where trust in the justice system has been chronically low. Data sources are varied and include a set of 445 verdicts reached between 2005 and 2017, as well as interviews with judges, judicial clerks, lawyers, and jurors. Data from two public opinion surveys, conducted in 1993 and 2011, were also used to assess the effects of lay participation on the legitimacy of the judiciary.

Lay magistrates are involved in most of the criminal cases in England and Wales. They typically sit in panels, but in minor cases they sit as single decision-makers. In both situations, they are assisted by a legal adviser. Lay magistrates also hear appeals as part of a mixed court presided over by a professional judge. Lay magistrates are more diverse in personal characteristics than professional judges, but the level of commitment required results in an overrepresentation of older, middle-class people. The lay magistrate is defined by law, professional work patterns, budget constraints, and the traditional legal culture. In addition, the architecture of the courtroom, as well as the use of video links, often impedes interaction between lay magistrates and defendants. These constraints at times threaten justice and procedural fairness. The number of lay magistrates has been declining for years. To dispose of cases more quickly, professional judges have taken a slice of the caseload. A different work pattern can be found at the youth court where magistrates engage actively with the defendant and are not confined to a narrow decision-making function.

Lay participation in state judicial procedures has been championed, in Argentina and elsewhere, as embodying new ways of making justice – imbued with the experiences and sentiments of ordinary people and carrying into courthouses the quotidien’s romance of commonsensical authenticity and candidness. Research on law and the everyday, however, has paid little attention to ordinary citizens serving as jurors. The negative constitution of the everyday against state law situates jurors and their courthouse experiences at the other extreme of the continuum, delinked from everyday sites and practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the province of Córdoba, this chapter discusses ‘everyday justice’ from the empirical vantage point of the recent incorporation of lay decision-makers to the historically professional-only Argentine criminal justice system. The discussion follows jurors as they enter courthouses and as multiple authorities attempt to govern their presence, role, and status therein. The resulting enmeshment of formal and informal practices, I argue, reinforces jurors’ alterity vis-à-vis legal professionals, their postures, and modes of conduct, solidifying the implied ‘law vs. everyday’ divide. The chapter suggests that it may be fruitful to investigate this very divide not as ontologically given, but as an effect of multi-scalar governance attempts in discrete times and spaces.