Lay Participation In Civil Trial

Although lay participation in criminal trial has been discussed and institutionalized in some way in many countries, lay participation in civil trial was either abolished or not considered as a viable reform. In fact, lay people of some kind often participate in resolving civil disputes, particularly in conciliation or mediation. Yet, those lay participation is almost categorically different from lay participation in civil trial. Conciliators or mediators are not randomly chosen but either local social dignitaries or professionals of some kind. Lay participation of this kind supplements civil trial (as named ADR), but lay participation in civil trial could have potential to transform litigation procedure itself. Moreover, lay participation in civil trial itself is a practice of democratic governance of a country. Yet, it is also true that lay participation in civil trial would not be welcomed as it is believed that civil trial cases are more difficult to understand than criminal trial cases and that lay participation in civil trial would make civil trial slower and more costly. In this session, Japanese preliminary empirical studies of lay participation in civil trial will be presented, which include findings from survey of ordinary people and lawyers who once served as judge, and those from experiments of jury deliberations on damages. We welcome papers on research findings on lay participation in other countries and also critical comments on research on lay participation in civil trial.