Currently in the Swedish judicial system juries are not used except for court cases regarding freedom of speech (tryckfrihetsbrott) such as slander. Instead the people who drafted the laws dictating how criminal allegations and court cases are supposed to be handled decided that, in order to increase "the public's insight into the legal system", to have average people with little to no background or education in law take the place of judges. These are called nämndemän in Swedish but it's usually translated as "lay judges" in English. They are just as "powerful" as the professional judges in the sense that their opinions have as much weight as the professional judges except when it comes to breaking ties during voting.
Despite the fact that these lay judges are politically appointed by the politicians sitting in the relevant municipality they are supposed to be politically neutral. Of course in reality they still tend to share the political and social views of the political party members that nominated them, or at least have similar views. Thus it's not hard to see a huge problem with impartiality and bias when someone who might sympathize with a party which is anti-immigration, for example, gets to make judgement regarding whether or not an asylum seeker should be able to stay in the country.
Now a study has shown concretely how which political party that nominated the lay judges effects whether or not asylum seekers get to stay in the country. Simplified: if someone who was nominated by The Sweden Democrats, a political party which revolves around being against immigration and is otherwise generally reactionary, they have a statistically noticeable lower chance of getting stay than if they were nominated by The Leftist Party, a former communist and now far-left socialist and feminist party that loves immigrants.
As such it raises a really serious question: should the values, opinions and beliefs of those that make legal judgement, whether they are professional judges or juries, affect their conclusions? I think it's impossible to escape from some levels of bias when it comes down to it but whenever it's systematic something needs to change.
In my opinion the system of having "lay judges" should be completely scrapped and instead there should only be professional judges. Said judges, their decision making and reasoning could however be observed by lay people behind closed doors if it's unreasonable to do it completely in public. Essentially what's important isn't what their conclusions are but rather how they they came to those conclusions. What evidence, logic and reasoning lead to that specific conclusion? That's the important part that should be subject to intense scrutiny.
Despite the fact that these lay judges are politically appointed by the politicians sitting in the relevant municipality they are supposed to be politically neutral. Of course in reality they still tend to share the political and social views of the political party members that nominated them, or at least have similar views. Thus it's not hard to see a huge problem with impartiality and bias when someone who might sympathize with a party which is anti-immigration, for example, gets to make judgement regarding whether or not an asylum seeker should be able to stay in the country.
Now a study has shown concretely how which political party that nominated the lay judges effects whether or not asylum seekers get to stay in the country. Simplified: if someone who was nominated by The Sweden Democrats, a political party which revolves around being against immigration and is otherwise generally reactionary, they have a statistically noticeable lower chance of getting stay than if they were nominated by The Leftist Party, a former communist and now far-left socialist and feminist party that loves immigrants.
As such it raises a really serious question: should the values, opinions and beliefs of those that make legal judgement, whether they are professional judges or juries, affect their conclusions? I think it's impossible to escape from some levels of bias when it comes down to it but whenever it's systematic something needs to change.
In my opinion the system of having "lay judges" should be completely scrapped and instead there should only be professional judges. Said judges, their decision making and reasoning could however be observed by lay people behind closed doors if it's unreasonable to do it completely in public. Essentially what's important isn't what their conclusions are but rather how they they came to those conclusions. What evidence, logic and reasoning lead to that specific conclusion? That's the important part that should be subject to intense scrutiny.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1HounoR
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