Lay magistracy

1./Which one of for or which one is against a lay Magistracy ?

The first document, document 4 is against lay Magistracy as magistrates in general due to the wilingness of the Ministry of Justice to made cost saving mesures with closures for many magistrates court. The fact is now that many magistrates positions are called into question because of the expansion of cases decided by police and prosecutors . This downard trend of cases dealed by lay magistrates and the trend of rationalise business will produce a drop in the number of appointed magistrates  .

The second document, document 5 is for a lay Magistracy .  This document shows by strong arguments that lay magistrates have many advantages. Moreover, the difference between them and  professionnal ones is weak .In addition,  the overriding need to reduce costs highlights the importance of this type of magistrates.

2./The main arguments in favor of lay Magistracy are :

They have local social knowledge of their community , of local people  as local citizens.

As bench of three , different experiences and knowledge they seethings in different ways

They are more reflective of the population . «  You are being judged by your peers »

Less expensive because they are not paid , even if they need costs of training to work

They bring a result that is seen as fairly one, due to the differences of approach of siting in threes , softly sentences

The main arguments in favor of professional staff are :

They manage cases , with stronger and faster ways to make verdicts.

They make better job in hard cases , because they are the most qualified for the job of dealing with different types of cases : they bring their studies and abilities to discuss verdict, sentence or any other consult faster than lay magistrates.

As we can see police cannot be trusted to hand out summary justice and will act as judge and jury . As a consequence, professional staff will survive but as the strongest strenght in Justice with strong legal requirements.

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