Study On The Criminal Jury System

The criminal jury system is one of the most ancient judiciaries in the world which is widely accepted in the most countries. It refers to an important judicial and trial system in which the ordinary people, the non-professional judges are absorbed as jurors according to certain selective procedures constituted by the national governments in order to participate in the trial of national civil or criminal case, they share the same rights of judicatory judgments with full-time judges, and protect the justice and democracy of the national judicature. Nowadays the jury system is implemented in the U.K. and the USA as the representative of countries with common law system, while assessor system is employed in the Germany and France as the representative of countries with civil law system. However in china, the people's assessor system is accepted and works well. It refers to a judiciary system in which people's assessors who are formed in terms of the legal procedures participate in the judgments of the people's courts and share the same judiciary with judge. In August 28th 2004, rule on the perfection of the people's assessor system was discussed and arrives at a final agreement in the 11th meeting of the tenth national representative conference. This is the first time that a unified standard is brought forward by the way of the specific regulations, which indicates that the improvement and unification of the people's assessor system imposes great positive impact upon the development of the Chinese legislation. The well functioned jury system relies seriously upon the jury theory, the judiciary system and some specific principles, but at present, there exist many a problem in the Chinese jury system which needs to be further analyzed about its reasons and obtains some effective suggestions about its reformation and perfection. This thesis will do more research about this topic in the following five chapters.The great judge, Horace said:" we can't understand the present law unless we have clear ideas about the history of the law." In this thesis, it comprises five parts. Part one introduces the origins and the development of the western jury system. The original jury system originated from the slavery at the earliest stage in Athens and Rome while the modern jury system regards medieval Britain as its headspring. The contemporary British jury system begins to turn into assessor system after its reformation and evolvement in the countries with common law system. In modern times, every nation tries to reform and perfect the jury system according to its practical situation, narrows down its case range, but the jury system still plays an important significance in our life. Part two analyzes the foreign jury system theoretically, summarizes its characteristics and types, theoretical value and survival conditions and lays some theoretical basis for the reformation and perfection of the Chinese jury system. Part three states the development of the Chinese jury system. All the factors which make great contribution upon the development of the Chinese jury system are the naturalization of the western jury system by the end of the Qing Dynasty, its attempting during the republic nation and the rudimental formation before 1949. However, there are still some problems legislatively and practically in our jury system. Part four claims a rational thinking about the jury system. There are at least six negative factors which hold back the implementation of the jury system. That is to say, the jury system lacks of the sufficient support from the constitution, it is in discordance with other relative laws and rules, the rules seems to be improved, administration and localization of the jurisdiction have bad influence, and the theories of the jury system needs to be reinforced. The final part analyzes the great significance of the implementation of the jury system in China, provides its promising future and at the end brings forward the author's suggestions.