Reconsideration About The People's Jury System

Nowadays, judicial democracy is the inevitable tendency across the whole world. Jury system is not only an important way for common people to participate in process of judicial trial but also a vital method for fulfillment of judicial democracy. However, as for the situation in China, jury system takes on declination under the present historical condition although it had ever been seemingly prosperous since the jury system was introduced into China at the end of Qing dynasty. The typical phenomenon is that in practice juror only have right to take part in the process of the judgment but have no right to make any decision about the case. To some extent, jury system has become void in China. The legislative reasons for the problem are as following: firstly, the principle of people jury provided in the Constitution of 1954 has been crossed out from the Constitution in 1982, which means that there is no constitutional support for the jury system in the present; secondly, the relevant rules are so abstract and rough that it is difficult to enforce them smoothly. Therefore, it is of large theoretic and practical meaning to perfect jury system for the purpose of submitting to international tendency and carrying out judicial democracy.From the point of concept of jury system, the author analyzes the political basement of the system, explained the system's valuable goal, and pointed out the main problems resulted from the legislature and practice of jury system of China as well as the reasons for the problems. On the other hand, the author explores some foreign legislature and practice and puts forward some suggestions with consideration of Chinese reality.