Judge | Definition, Training, Responsibilities, & Facts - Britannica

Lay judges

In most civil-law countries, judges at all levels are professionally trained in the law, but in many other countries they are not. In England part-time lay judges greatly outnumber full-time professional judges. Called magistrates or justices of the peace, they dispose of more than 95 percent of all criminal cases and do so with general public satisfaction and the approbation of most lawyers (see magistrates’ court). Professional judges handle only the relatively small number of very serious crimes; most of their time is devoted to civil cases. England places an unusually heavy reliance on lay judges, but they are far from unknown in the courts of many other countries, particularly at the lowest trial level. This was also true in the former Soviet Union and remains so in the United States. In some countries of the Middle East (e.g., Israel and Iran), lay judges constitute religious courts and are selected for service on the basis of their knowledge of and fidelity to nonsecular rules and laws. In Finland panels of lay judges sit with credentialed judges in district court criminal cases (and may also be used in some civil cases pertaining to domestic issues). The Japanese enacted legislation in the early 21st century to introduce lay judges into the country’s legal system.

There is considerable diversity in the way lay judges are chosen and used in judicial work. In the United States, for example, lay judges are popularly elected for limited terms, whereas in England they are appointed by a Judicial Appointments Commission (subject to approval by the lord chancellor) to serve until retirement or removal. In England lay judges serve intermittently in panels on a rotating basis for short periods, whereas in the United States they sit alone and continuously. In South Africa lay judges (called assessors) always sit with professional judges; in England they sometimes do; and in the United States they never do. In some developing countries many judges at all levels have little formal legal training. Sometimes they are religious authorities rather than lawyers, since in many countries religion and secular government are not sharply differentiated, and the law derives from religious doctrine. The vast majority of countries that use lay judges at the lowest trial level, however, insist upon professionally trained judges in trial courts of general jurisdiction and in appellate courts.

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