Study On The Democratic Meaning Of Modern Jury System

Recent years, with the progress of construction of the judicial democratization, the jury system has aroused popular focus in the field of theory and practice. As for the Chinese jury system, the negative evaluation is far more than positive ones, for in China, it has more not less the symbolic meaning of democracy, which is agreed unanimously by the two fields. In addition, when seeking the foreign jury systems, since last century, the range of its application has become narrower and narrower from which we seem to say boldly "jury system tends to fall". Besides, there do exist some problems in the working process in foreign countries. On the basis of these facts, some people question the democratic meaning of the jury system nowadays and claim that modern jury system has lost its value of being itself the important content of judicial democracy. With these opinions alike, the author poses his own view. After surveying the representative jury systems of U.S.A UK France and German, he concludes that the modern jury system has strengthened rather than lost its democratic meaning and is still the first factor on which it exists. In this article, through reviewing the basic definition of political democracy, he holds that the criterions for judging the democratic meaning of the jury system are: First, whether average citizens own the right to anticipate in trial and this right could be protected and realized efficiently or not. Second, whether these average citizens (jurors) who anticipate in trial realize the efficient anticipation and their independent right to command could be protected and realized or not. The author objects to emphasizing the "external" democratic view on the jury system and believes that we should start from the jury system itself to see what function can the jury system play in judging its democratic meaning. He thinks, once the jurysystem meets such two criterions, it's safely for us to believe that the jury system does play its substantial democratic role (though in different countries it varies from each other). In this article, the author also analyses the problems existing in modern jury system and considers the problems appear in: first, a tendency that anticipants gather in some certain class or group. Second, the independency of the common citizens' trial is still barrier in different degrees. Aiming at these facts, the author tries to give an "internal" analysis on the jury system's democratic meaning as: the scale of anticipation, the structure of the right and the procedure. Combining with these three factors, the author thus raises some constructive suggestions.