Ordinary citizens have been a part of many decision-making bodies throughout history. In this important new study, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic examines development of various forms of lay participation in legal decision-making. She specifically focuses on the development of mixed tribunals in which professional and lay judges decide cases jointly. Primarily concerned with the nature of Croatian mixed tribunals, Ivkovic investigates recent trials, providing an in-depth look at the interaction among tribunal members. She presents a detailed analysis that determines how gender, age, occupational prestige, and education affect the perceived frequency and importance of lay judges' participation during trial and deliberation. Finally, she discusses the future of mixed tribunals and possible improvements to the system. Ivkovic's work is a timely contribution that will not only help readers understand recent events in Croatia but has the potential to improve the quality of any tribunal composed of professional and lay members.

Although most countries around the world use professional judges, they also rely on lay citizens, untrained in the law, to decide criminal cases. The participation of lay citizens helps to incorporate community perspectives into legal outcomes and to provide greater legitimacy for the legal system and its verdicts. This book offers a comprehensive and comparative picture of how nations use lay people in legal decision-making. It provides a much-needed, in-depth analysis of the different approaches to citizen participation and considers why some countries' use of lay participation is long-standing whereas other countries alter or abandon their efforts. This book examines the many ways in which countries around the world embrace, reject, or reform the way in which they use ordinary citizens in legal decision-making.

Democracy in the Courts examines lay participation in the administration of justice and how it reflects certain democratic principles. An international comparative perspective is taken for exploring how lay people are involved in the trial of criminal cases in European countries and how this impacts on their perspectives of the national legal systems. Comparisons between countries are made regarding how and to what extent lay participation takes place and the relation between lay participation and the legal system's legitimacy is analyzed. Presenting the results of interviews with both professional judges and lay participants in a number of European countries regarding their views on the involvement of lay people in the legal system, this book explores the ways in which judges and lay people interact while trying cases, examining the characteristics of both professional and lay judging of cases. Providing an important analysis of practice, this book will be of interest to academics, legal scholars and practitioners alike.

This book analyses the mixed courts of professional and lay judges in the Japanese criminal justice system. It takes a particular focus on the highly public start of the mixed court, the saiban-in system, and the jury system between 1928-1943. This was the first time Japanese citizens participated as decision makers in criminal law. The book assesses reasons for the jury system's failure, and its suspension in 1943, as well as the renewed interest in popular involvement in criminal justice at the end of the twentieth century. Popular Participation in Japanese Criminal Justice proceeds by explaining the process by which lay participation in criminal trials left the periphery to become an important national matter at the turn of the century. It shows that rather than an Anglo-American jury model, outline recommendations made by the Japanese Judicial Reform Council were for a mixed court of judges and laypersons to try serious cases. Concerns about the lay judge/saiban-in system are raised, as well as explanations for why it is flourishing in contemporary society despite the failure of the jury system during the period 1928-1943. The book presents the wider significance of Japanese mixed courts in Asia and beyond, and in doing so will be of great interests to scholars of socio-legal studies, criminology and criminal justice.

Lay participation in the criminal justice process in the form of a jury is a celebrated phenomenon throughout the common law jurisdictions. While not claiming credit for its origin, England, as the latent cradle of the modern jury, disseminated this mode

This book tells a story of Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian regime to a democratic system where human rights are protected as required by international human rights treaties. There were difficult times for human rights protection during the martial law era; however, there has also been remarkable transformation progress in human rights protection thereafter. The book reflects the transformation in Taiwan and elaborates whether or not it is facilitated or hampered by its Confucian tradition. There are a number of institutional arrangements, including the Constitutional Court, the Control Yuan, and the yet-to-be-created National Human Rights Commission, which could play or have already played certain key roles in human rights protections. Taiwan’s voluntarily acceptance of human rights treaties through its implementation legislation and through the Constitutional Court’s introduction of such treaties into its constitutional interpretation are also fully expounded in the book. Taiwan’s NGOs are very active and have played critical roles in enhancing human rights practices. In the areas of civil and political rights, difficult human rights issues concerning the death penalty remain unresolved. But regarding the rights and freedoms in the spheres of personal liberty, expression, privacy, and fair trial (including lay participation in criminal trials), there are in-depth discussions on the respective developments in Taiwan that readers will find interesting. In the areas of economic, social, and cultural rights, the focuses of the book are on the achievements as well as the problems in the realization of the rights to health, a clean environment, adequate housing, and food. The protections of vulnerable groups, including indigenous people, women, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals, the disabled, and foreigners in Taiwan, are also the areas where Taiwan has made recognizable achievements, but still encounters problems. The comprehensive coverage of this book should be able to give readers a well-rounded picture of Taiwan’s human rights performance. Readers will find appealing the story of the effort to achieve high standards of human rights protection in a jurisdiction barred from joining international human rights conventions. This book won the American Society of International Law 2021 Certificate of Merit in a Specialized Area of International Law.