Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/30133 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics No. 2008,20
Publisher: 
Philipps-University Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Marburg
Abstract: 
Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can be interpreted as a renunciation of an additional division of labor, which is expected to cause foregone benefits in terms of the costs as well as the quality of judicial decision-making. In order to be justified, these foregone benefits need to be overcompensated by other - actually realized - benefits of at least the same magnitude. This paper discusses pros and cons of lay participation, presents a new database and tests some of the theoretically derived hypotheses empirically. The effects of lay participation on the judicial system, a number of governance variables but also on economic performance indicators are rather modest. A proxy representing historic experiences with any kind of lay participation is the single most robust variable.
Subjects: 
Economic Effects of Legal Systems
Judicial Decision-Making
Trial by Jury
Jurors
Lay Assessors
Constitutional Economics
Civil Society
Quality of Governance
History of Thought
JEL: 
B15
H11
H41
H73
K41
P51
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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