• DOI:10.1086/467481
• Corpus ID: 144941508

Lay Judges in the German Criminal Courts

@article{Casper1972LayJI,
  title={Lay Judges in the German Criminal Courts},
  author={G. Gary Casper and H. J. Zeisel},
  journal={The Journal of Legal Studies},
  year={1972},
  volume={1},
  pages={135 - 191}
}

• G. Casper, H. Zeisel
• Published 1 January 1972
• Law, History
• The Journal of Legal Studies

THE role laymen play in the administration of justice has been a subject of controversy ever since trial by jury became the standard mode of trial at common law. The controversy rages unabated in our day, friend and foe basing their positions on claims of fact that sharply contradict each other. On the European continent, the jury is in eclipse. Only Austria, Norway, a few jurisdictions in Switzerland, and Belgium have retained the jury. Austria has an eight-man jury operating under severely restrictive controls by a three-judge professional tribunal. The ten-man Norwegian jury is similarly constrained. In Switzerland the jury formally survives in the cantons of Geneva, Fribourg, Thurgau, and Ziirich, as well as on the federal level, but only in Ziirich does the jury seem to possess any real independence. Belgium has preserved jury trials for major and some political crimes since the days of her independence. The German jury disappeared almost unnoticed in 1924. The French jury fell permanently, interestingly enough after the Vichy regime in 1941 introduced the German mixed tribunal. The Fascists did away with the Italian jury in 1931. There is no longer any jury in Eastern Europe. The jury has thus maintained its position mainly in the orbit of the common law, in Great Britain, the British Commonwealth, but more than