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Lay Judge System
2006/6/17 Satomi Oka
Nowadays we’ve heard lots of murder cases
in Japan.
Especially cases due to a lack of communication with neighbors and
acquaintances which causes
indiscriminate cases of killing little children. Some cases need amateur
common knowledge for a guilty decision. A professional judge alone isn’t enough
any more because of a trend toward psychologically complicated homicide.
The bill of lay judge system was passed by
the Parliament in 2001 and will be enforced in 2009. Under the new system, six
randomly selected citizens over 20 years old will work with three professional
judges and deliver joint verdicts in trials. The new system is similar to the
French and German system of trial under the consultation judge.
Japan had
a jury system based on Anglo-American model for fifteen years from 1928 to
1943. The main reason for its abolition was the grip of surging militarism
before World War II.
It has passed more than 60 years since the
end of the war. And the execution of the bill has a deep meaning as a
democratic nation. Citizen working as a lay judge will directly participate in
Japanese Judiciary. In a democratic country citizens should be involved in each
of legislation, administration and judiciary. However, among them only judicial
power has not citizens’ involvement. It’s been a kind of labyrinth, because a
trial hasn’t been a place where ordinary people could understand legal terms
easily and the process to the summation was often long.
Here are some objections according to the
Yomiuri:
1 Trial need a lot of argumentation and
debates, however, the majority of Japanese have no basic training in
presentation or argumentation.
2 Since randomly selected people will be
obligated to join honorary and proud professionals in trying serious criminal
cases, maybe lay judges would feel bewildered unless today’s authorized trial
system is improved and friendly.
3 It takes much time to proceed a trial and
may seem complicated for the public. The simpler, the better.
In my personal opinion, a sense of freedom
in democracy includes equality and the right to vote and speak. Every citizen
in the country can vote to elect its government officials. This means that each
of the people can convey his or her opinions to the parliament and the members
of parliament make rules. This is true of attending trials, where a lay judge
can watch the judicial process. This is the true meaning of a democratic
country.
I think it is important for us to become
lay judges. The success of implementation in this system will show us a true
meaning of democracy. I support this system over improvement of the present old
system.
New Jury System in Japan
Our new jury system will be introduced in three years. This system is to
improve current judicial system which has had reputations of taking long
time and too much being closed. But, I am against the new system. The reasons
are followed. One is to ask some civilians who have own jobs to spend several
days to participate trials. It interrupts their jobs for the trials. Secondly,
it burdens them mentally to judge other people due to unusual work pressure.
So, my. idea to cope with this is to apply election system which we select
the right candidates by voting.
Yoshihide Wakamatsu
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