i drew this (well, outlined some of the countries on this map!) a couple of weeks ago thinking it might correlate with todd’s family systems or the hajnal line or something, but it doesn’t really seem to. well, maybe. kinda/sorta. or not.
what this is is a map of which european countries have jury trials or not — or something in between.
i based this on this paper here: “A Comparison of Criminial Jury Decision Rules in Democratic Countries” [opens pdf]. the author looked at which countries have jury trials for criminal cases. he defined a jury as: “a group of more than three unelected laypersons who are selected or appointed to sit in judgment on a criminal case at the trial level; such laypersons are not generally ‘professionalized’ jurors and may be involved in deciding questions of fact, law, and/or punishment. Groups of professional lay judges who serve over long periods of time, elected laypersons, and very small numbers of lay assessors sitting with professional judges do not constitute a jury for my purposes here.” iow, he was looking for where you would be judged by a jury of your peers.
the color-code is:
– yellow = countries with (mostly) ‘pure’ juries – a pure jury is one in which jurors “deliberate and issue verdicts apart from professional judges.”
– light green = countries with (substantially) ‘mixed’ juries – a mixed jury is one in which “jurors and judges to deliberate and issue verdicts or sentences together.”
– dark green = countries without criminal juries. *gulp*
here are todd’s family systems again (h/t m.g. @those who can see!):
it could look like places with the authoritarian (“stem”) family system (germany, sweden, czech republic, switzerland partly) prefer authoritarian court systems, i.e. only judge and no juries. but what happened to poland and ireland then? did poland just inherit the german system, and the irish the british one? nations with mixed family systems (france, italy, norway) seem to prefer a mixed court system — maybe. and nations with nuclear families (england, spain) seem to go for jury trials — but not greece (or poland).
maybe there’s something here. dunno. still, it’s awfully interesting to know that you won’t get a jury trial amongst the germanics or (some of) the scandis! wtf?!
(note: comments do not require an email. juries are better, right?)
hbd chick 