Category: jury system
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Japan’s Supreme Court finds lay participation in criminal trials constitutional
On November 16, 2011 Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that the country’s new “saiban’in” system of citizen participation in serious criminal trials was constitutional. Issued unanimously by all fifteen of the court’s judges sitting en banc as a Grand Bench, this ruling effectively eliminates any constitutional doubts about the system which may have lingered after it…
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The Spread of the Jury Trial
David Law’s excellent post (if you liked that, you should read his great article on Japan, employing a relatively new, interview-based strategy for studying comparative constitutional law, an article which Ran Hirschl also referenced) reminded me to draw attention to a new article on the spread of the jury trial around the world.
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How do you say “ladies, gentlemen, and judges of the jury” in Japanese?
For the first time in decades, as the Economist reports, Japan once again has a jury system (or, if you’re feeling saucy, a “saiban-in seido”), and it is puzzling in a variety of ways. The first puzzle has to do with its sheer existence.