陪審員が判決や事実認定を行う陪審制はどのように生成・発展してきたのでしょうか。今日の陪審制の原型とされる12世紀イギリスで設けられた制度が、植民地から世界へ継受された過程を説明します。刑事事件での一般陪審員の登用は、国民主権の実質化や司法への信頼や理解促進といった文脈で、欧州、南米、アジアに広がっていきました。一方、英語圏では米国を除くすべての国で民事陪審は事実上廃止され、米国でさえ非常に稀となり、司法取引に取って代わっています。陪審による「法の無視」を含め、陪審制の利点と課題を洗い出し、陪審制存続の鍵を握っているかもしれない非英語圏の動向を考察します。
 

• Offers a historical discussion of the global use of juries throughout history
• Considers the benefits and the challenges of using juries and analyses why the jury trial has declined in English-speaking countries
• Covers both civil and criminal juries, giving the reader well-rounded insight into court systems

      
Almost every society has professional judges, but from ancient Athens to modern Asia, cultures have wanted ordinary people involved in criminal judgment: the jury. The use of juries comes with challenges; societies must determine how to select jurors, what cases jurors should decide and by what rules, and how to inform jurors about the law and evidence.
    
This Very Short Introduction shows how and why societies around the world have used juries, charting the spread of the twelve-person jury from England to the British colonies in America, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. In criminal cases, use of lay jurors stretched to nations in Europe, Latin America, and Asia as they aspired to democracy, greater popular participation in government, and legitimacy of the justice system. But in English-speaking countries, jury trials are declining. Civil juries have been virtually abolished everywhere except the United States, and even there they are rare. Among other painful alternatives chosen by the accused, plea bargaining is now taking the place of criminal jury trials. In this book, Renée Lettow Lerner describes the benefits and challenges of using juries, including jury nullification, and considers how innovations from non-English-speaking countries may hold the key to jurors' survival.