Lay Participation Research Articles

Judgment by Peers: Lay Participation in Legal Decision Making

Judgment by Peers: Lay Participation in Legal Decision Making

Death Commemoration Strategies in Medieval Portugal: A Mirror of Lay Participation in Religious Parochial Life (The Case of Coimbra)

This article will, through the analysis of three parishes in Coimbra between the twelfth and the fourteenth century, investigate practices surrounding the commemoration of death. Through the study of extant wills, post-mortem donations, and necrological documents—such as Obituaries and Anniversary Books—this work seeks to describe the populations and communities who entrusted their final salvation to these churches. This characterization will allow a description of the typology of the suffrage ceremonies founded by these souls, meanwhile presenting an evaluation of the maintenance and management of these foundations by the churches and its chapters throughout the centuries. This paper intends to highlight what survives after death—not only in terms of memory, but also in light of social relationships, interpersonal and familial connections, and professional solidarities. Focusing on a population that is otherwise poorly documented—and moreover, represents a socio-professional background of a low echelon—this text intends to present a global characterization of the cult of the dead, with a further aim of drawing attention to the intervention and enrichment of parish pastoral care by the lay population in this Portuguese city.

Trial and Error: A Comparative Perspective on the Lay Participation in Criminal Trials and Appellate Review of Errors in Taiwan

Taiwan follows its East Asian counterparts to establish a system of lay participation in criminal trials, which is called citizen judges and took effect in January 2023. But Taiwan will soon face similar conundrums, like Japan and South Korea have encountered, about whether to allow professional judges to review and even reverse decisions made by citizen judges. In a mock case, the Taiwan High Court and Taiwan’s Supreme Court both attempted to address the conflict from a perspective of American law, but more controversies have emerged than been solved. This Article follows the route of the two courts and deals with those unsettled controversies in four aspects: legal errors, factual errors, sentencing errors, and the mixed questions of law and fact. This Article advises appellate courts to: (1) employ principles like preservation of claims, plain errors, and harmless errors when reviewing legal errors de novo, (2) incorporate the substantial evidence review with the existing law into a two-step test, through which the appellate review of factual errors may work better, (3) interpret the standard of exceeding unreasonableness in an abuse-of-discretion way when investigating errors in sentencing, and (4) replace the de novo standard with a spectrum approach when reviewing the errors of impropriety, namely the mixed question of law and fact in Taiwan’s context. Through these adjustments in the appellate review process, the new system of citizen judges will better serve to enhance the public knowledge of and confidence in criminal trials as the new system has been entailed.

Народное участие в правосудии: на примере шеффенского суда и суда присяжных

Lay participation is an indicator of a democratic society. This article analyzes some traditional forms of lay participation in criminal proceedings, in particular, the Schöffen courts in Germany and jury trials in the UK, e.g., the main competencies of people's judges, staffing rules, etc. The author highlighted some general and special disadvantages, as well as those associated with the application of these forms in Russian criminal trials. The diachronic analysis of courts with people's assessors and jury courts revealed a number of differences and similarities. In Russia, Schöffen courts took place during the reign of Catherine the Great, as well as in the Soviet period; jurors participated in criminal trials in the second half of the XIX century and still do. The article also describes the current domestic legislation on lay participation in judicial proceedings.

Lay participation in the judiciary in China and Switzerland

In the last years, lay participation in the judiciary has come under increasing pressure in Switzerland. By contrast, China has undertaken efforts to strengthen it. The purpose of this contribution is to analyse these opposite developments. Furthermore, the benefits and drawbacks of lay participation will be assessed from a comparative perspective.

The Impact of the Norm of the Polish Constitution Establishing the Lay Participation in the Administration of Justice on the Rule of Law in Poland

In Western legal traditions, democracy is inseparable from the rule of law, which presupposes the state to establish an effective and transparent judicial system that guarantees human rights and freedoms. The involvement of Lay Participation in the administration of justice (lay judges (mixed tribunal) or justices of the peace (magistrates) is one of the instruments for achieving this objective. The constitutions of the fourteen EU Member States, including Poland, oblige some Lay Participation in the administration of justice. However, the formulations of the norms in the constitutions, establishing Lay Participation in the administration of justice, differ. Based on the analysis of the Polish case, the article focuses on the question whether it would be sufficient to establish a relevant general provision in the Constitution, leaving the specification (form and extent of Lay Participation) to the legislator. The case of Poland has shown that the legislator can, without amending the Constitution, introduce other forms of Lay Participation (such as justices of the peace) or/and extend the extent of Lay Participation to judicial disciplinary cases when they are elected by the legislature; however, this poses a threat to the rule of law in Poland. Therefore, the article aims at discussing the impact of the Polish constitutional regulation of the Lay Participation on the violation of the rule of law.

The Mediation Effect of Lay Participation on the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Pastoral Effectiveness: Evidence from Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili

Pastoral effectiveness is an important factor in the success of pastoral activities in Catholic organizations, particularly at the parish level. Pastoral effectiveness can be influenced by transformational leadership and by lay participation. The aims of this research are (1) to examine and analyse the influence of transformational leadership and lay participation on pastoral effectiveness in Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili, (2) examine the influence of transformational leadership on lay participation; and (3) to examine how lay participation mediates the relations between transformational leadership and pastoral effectiveness in this same parish. This research used questionnaires to collect data, with a total of 378 samples, and SMART-PLS 3.1 was used to analyze the data. The results of the research show that transformational leadership and lay participation indeed have a significant and positive influence on pastoral effectiveness. Transformational leadership also has significant impact on lay participation, while lay participation plays a significant role on the relationship between transformational leadership and pastoral effectiveness. This research could enrich the inferential studies on transformational leadership, lay participation and pastoral effectiveness in Catholic Church context which is still lacking. It also contributes to the improvement of pastoral effectiveness, especially within Saint Antonio Parish, Motael, Dili, and in the archdiocese of Dili in general by adopting transformational leadership and lay participation.

Lay participation with medical expertise in online self-care practices: Social knowledge (co)production in the Running Mania injury forum

Recent literature on the public understanding of science has focused on replacing the deficit model of public communication in which experts disseminate information with one that encourages public participation and dialogue. Situated within this call for increased participation, this study looks at self-care practices in which medical expertise is not passively consumed by the layperson, but shared and (re)produced through arenas of lay practice. This collective knowledge production is facilitated by the online environment, which provides access to mediated medical knowledge and the ability to form communities in which users can negotiate this expertise and share their experiences. The laypersons examined here are members of the Canadian online collective, Running Mania, highlighting how this negotiation of expertise occurs in a “wellness” community. Drawing from member interviews and website observations of the site's injury forum, the study examines collective injury management using two dominant theoretical discourses surrounding lay knowledge and participation in medical expertise: the lay expert whose knowledge arises from experience and the expert patient whose knowledge base parallels dominant biomedical discourse. Using the coproduction model and the related concepts of tinkering and logic of care from material semiotics, the research examines how these knowledge forms articulate to produce an intermediary discourse unique to this collective's articulation of running and caring practices, a discourse that is enacted in individuals' embodied negotiation of these multiple forms of medical expertise. It suggests that the logic of care has the potential to bridge the expert/lay boundary since the need for persistent, attentive tinkering applies across epistemological divides: in “good” care practices, multiple expertises are needed, both expert and lay, to hold the body together.

Lay participation in the South African criminal justice system: An assessment of the assessor system

This paper sets out to demonstrate that the South African assessor system is not structured in a manner that holds the promise of adequately catering for the intended goal of promoting lay participation by community members in the adjudication of criminal cases. It identifies several challenges with the current assessor system in South Africa such as the unjustifiable differentiation between the assessor system in the magistrates’ courts and the high court which undermines this system as a form of lay participation. In the high court, assessors are required to have experience in the administration of justice or some other skill deemed useful in the case tried. This is not required of assessors in the magistrates’ courts. The paper also illustrates that there are no legislative guidelines on the appointment of assessors which leads to wide discretion being given to presiding officers in the appointment of assessors, which could potentially lead to the adoption of different approaches to similar cases. The key argument presented is that the discretion enjoyed by presiding officers when considering whether to use assessors should be limited by legislation. Most importantly, it is argued that that the legislature should consider reforming the assessor system with a view to establishing a system that will be equally applicable to both the high court and magistrates’ courts as the current differentiation seems unjustifiable.

"Physical activity is beneficial to anyone, including those with ASD": Antecedents of nurses recommending physical activity for people with autism spectrum disorder.

Participation in regular physical activity is linked with physical, psychological, and social improvements. Nevertheless, persons with autism spectrum disorder participate at lower levels than do their peers. Nurses can play a key role in helping to promote such behaviors, but do so sparingly. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which nurses recommend physical activity to people with autism spectrum disorder. Even though a number of scholars have examined the role of health professionals in promoting physical activity, comparatively little research has examined nurses. Further, previous scholars have largely focused on the promotion of physical activity to patients in general. However, people with disabilities and people with autism spectrum disorder, specifically, are frequently overlooked when it comes to physical activity promotion. Data were collected from a representative sample of nurses (n = 180) working in the United States. Results indicate that nurses were only moderately likely to recommend physical activity. When perceived barriers were low, perceived benefits held a positive, significant association with recommendations. However, when perceived barriers were high, the relationship between perceived benefits and recommendations was no longer significant. Analysis of qualitative data showed the value nurses place on physical activity, how they interpret barriers and benefits, and strategies for making physical activity inclusive for people with autism spectrum disorder. In conclusion, nurses have an opportunity to more frequently promote physical activity to their patients with autism spectrum disorder and, in doing so, help mitigate some of the poor health outcomes people with autism spectrum disorder experience. The authors identified implications for nursing education and professional development, as well as for sport and recreation managers charged with delivering physical activity to people with autism spectrum disorder.

In Ambiguous Times and Spaces: The Everyday Assemblage of Lay Participation to Argentine Courthouses

Most sociolegal research on juries and other forms of lay participation in criminal justice has been limited to questions of how lay people make decisions. This article proposes expanding this focus through a conceptually and methodologically novel examination of the recent incorporation of lay decision-makers in Argentina’s criminal justice system. Based on fieldwork conducted in the province of Córdoba, the article follows jurors as they enter the courthouses, unsettle normalized everyday practices and spatiotemporal arrangements, and encounter multiple authorities that define their role and legitimate belonging therein. The work of these multiple entities, the article argues, locates jurors in ambiguous situations between public and private spaces of the courthouses, and ultimately accentuate their alterity vis-à-vis legal professionals. Drawing on an ethnographic approach inspired in actor-network theory and on Mariana Valverde’s sociolegal elaborations of Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope, the article looks at this judicial reform as a site for fruitful examination of law’s multiscalar power dynamics, and it argues that legal institutions be investigated as flexible, fragile, and contingent assemblages of practices beyond their official representations.

Lay Participation in Japanese Criminal Justice: Prosecution Review Commissions, the Lay-Judge System, and Penal Institution Visiting Committees

AbstractThis article highlights reliance on lay participation as a mechanism for solving perceived problems in Japanese criminal justice by examining three reforms aimed at increasing lay participation in Japanese criminal justice: the mandatory prosecution power given to Prosecution Review Commissions, thesaiban’in seido(lay-judge system), and Penal Institution Visiting Committees. The article argues that lay participation plays an important role in legitimizing aspects of the current system. Despite the Nagoya Prison Scandal in 2002–03, Japan’s extraordinary achievements in order inside prisons have been maintained and citizens are comforted that the system has oversight by Visiting Committees. Although PRCs andsaiban’in seidorepresent a more open approach to eligibility and selection than Visiting Committees, they too help to legitimize existing structures. The article concludes by considering challenges to the continued reliance on lay participation in Japan including reform fatigue, the demographic crisis, the impact of geography, and technological developments.

Lay Participation in Danish Crime Trials: On the Interaction between Lay and Professional Judges during Deliberation

While there is abundant research on common law jury systems, we know less about lay participation in civil law crime trials, often called ‘mixed courts’ or alternately ‘mixed tribunals'. Here, a professional judge and a number of lay judges deliberate together on the issues of guilt and sentencing. This joint deliberation has naturally led both public opinion and research to focus on power relations such as lay judges’ dependence on the professional judges. Based on an ethnographic study of deliberation processes, the present article offers a different perspective on lay judges’ contribution and argues that their decision making rests on a hybrid construction of knowledge in the continuous interaction between the professional judge and lay participants during deliberation. The analysis of this decision‐making process contributes to our understanding of how ordinary people selected for this civic duty create knowledge about justice.

Explaining Structural Constraints on Lay Participation in Field Science

Using an example from the author’s work on field science in the American West in the early twentieth century, this essay considers how structural constraints on the interactions between scientists and lay people in the field might be explained. Not only is there unusually abundant source evidence about a local ranching family living near a paleontological field site, but the Cooks were especially assertive in attempting to exert influence. This example functions as a thickly documented limiting case for testing the constraints on lay participation in field practice during this period.

Knowing the Great Plains Weather: Field Life and Lay Participation on the American Frontier during the Railroad Era

On the US Great Plains frontier in the late nineteenth century, perhaps no area of scientific knowledge was more contested than the weather, which connected with debates around the long-term climate of this semiarid region. Observation of the weather was shared across the divide between scientists and lay people, illustrating an early historical predecessor of enlisting citizen scientists to help in the production of knowledge. Situating this example of lay participation in the larger context of diverse modes of field practice during the railroad era, this article examines the production of weather knowledge on the Great Plains frontier, especially in Kansas, to explore some important stages in the process of coordinating lay observers, including the ground-level practices of organizing lay people into networks for producing knowledge, and marginalizing and discrediting folk knowledge about the weather that was autonomous from the authorized scientific community. The author argues for greater attention to the historical emergence of crucial hierarchical, structured aspects of lay participation in science, inflected by the Chinese concept of shi, in contrast to the recently common focus on flattened, collaborative networks.

Lay Participation in Japan. Masahiro Fujita, Japanese Society and Lay Participation in Criminal Justice (Singapore: Springer, 2018) pp 282. Hardcover: $169.

Lay Participation in Japan. Masahiro Fujita, Japanese Society and Lay Participation in Criminal Justice (Singapore: Springer, 2018) pp 282. Hardcover: $169.

Lay Participation in Taiwan: Observations from Mock Trials

AbstractThis article introduces the designs and the potential problems of the new lay judge system in Taiwan. This article first describes the background of the development of lay participation in Taiwan, and the 2012 Observer Jury System and the 2018 Lay Judge System drafted by the judiciary. The core of this paper is a qualitative study of four mock trials conducted by four district courts in Taiwan. Through observations and interviews with mock trial lay judges, this article addresses three main problems of the new system, including professional judges’ domination in deliberations, the comprehensibility of law, and lack of evidence rules. It also provides a discussion of the possible solutions to the problems observed. This article urges that training sessions should be provided to both lay judges and legal professionals, adjust the discovery rule, provide guidance on sentencing, and create evidentiary rules.

Lay Participation in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Spain. Rieko Kage, Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia and Europe (Cambridge: University Press, 2017) pp 264. Hardcover: $74.00.

Lay Participation in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Spain. Rieko Kage, Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia and Europe (Cambridge: University Press, 2017) pp 264. Hardcover: $74.00.

The Ritual Protection of Enspirited Sacred Natural Sites on the Tibetan Plateau and the Optimization of Lay Participation

Little was known, until recently, about the widespread recovery of biodiversity that has taken place in Sacred Natural Sites (SNS) on the Tibetan Plateau since the revival of religious practices in 1978 and the felling ban in 1998. Research within the last 20 years has concluded that there is greater biodiversity in many SNS than in adjacent lands and there has been a recovery of ritual protection practice. The author critiques the most widely quoted research papers and contrasts them with research predicated on participatory research among Tibetan lay people. Many of the findings and conclusions from the most widely quoted research papers have focussed on the metrics of biodiversity and interviews in Tibetan Buddhist and Bon institutions. This appears to result in a biased interpretation of environmental protection and biodiversity recovery. As a result, lay participation in the ritual protection of SNS is sub-optimized in conservation planning and most village-designated SNS are not being recognized internationally.

The Jury Is Out: An Ethnographic Study of Lay Participation in the Norwegian Legal System

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to explore perceptions and assessments of lay participation in Norway during a historic time of transition away from all‐layperson juries. This study consisted of sixteen months of court observation and interviews with judges, prosecutors, former lay decision makers, defense attorneys, and other contributors to the country's longstanding jury debate. My ethnographic research demonstrates that all‐layperson juries in Norway face practical and procedural checks that differentiate them from Anglo‐American juries, among others. For this reason, legal professionals in Norway evince confidence that mixed courts of lay and professional citizens can facilitate fair case outcomes. A central finding from this research is that comparative analyses of all‐layperson juries and mixed courts require attention to the social specificity of the states that support such systems. To this end, lay participation in Norway challenges the conventional wisdom that jurors have greater independence and control over case outcomes than lay judges.