Rashomon Comes To The Courtroom: The Adoption Of The Lay Judge System In Japan, Its Impact On Jurisprudence, And The Implications For Civic Engagement,
2010
Portland State University
Rashomon Comes To The Courtroom: The Adoption Of The Lay Judge System In Japan, Its Impact On Jurisprudence, And The Implications For Civic Engagement, Bryan Matthew Thompson
Dissertations and Theses
In May of 2009, Japan began formal operations of the "saiban-in seido" or "lay judge system," a quasi-jury means of criminal trial adjudication that represents the first occasion since 1943 that average Japanese citizens will be required to fulfill a role in the criminal jurisprudential process. While the lay judge system promises to affect the methods and procedures of criminal trials in Japan, recent scholarship in the United States has raised an interesting question: to what degree can the lay participatory adjudication process facilitate greater levels of civic engagement in past citizen jurists once their service has completed?
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