Fairness, Justice, and Legitimacy: Experiences of People's Judges in South Russia

Abstract

Which criteria do Russians use to evaluate the fairness of their judges, and how does perceived fairness of actual trials influence general beliefs about Russian courts? Lay assessors at courts in South Russia were asked about their experience serving on mixed courts. The justice of the verdicts rendered and the fairness of judges partly explain the respondents' view of national courts. According to the results, the respondents are also using similar criteria for fairness as Americans or Germans. The social and psychological group effects in a Russian court of lay assessors exhibit a striking similarity to other Western tribunals. * The author thanks Dmitrij Donskow for his inestimable help in preparing and conducting the survey. Olga Litvinova assisted in translating the questionnaire and research literature. Vice-President of the Oblast Court of Rostow at the Don Wladimir Solotych made the survey possible by a support letter to the local courts. Sergey Potseluev was our contact person at the State University of Rostow at the Don. Steven Thaman, Alexei Trochev, and Ilja Alexandrov provided helpful information. Klaus F. Röhl provided the infrastructure of his chair in Bochum for the finishing phase of the project. Valerie Hans gave a lot of comments and suggestions to this article.

Jury Systems Around the World

“…Nonetheless, researchers have gathered opinions from lay and professional judges about their general experiences. A consistent finding from this research is, as expected, minimal participation by lay judges and domination by professional judges (Kutnjak Ivković 2007;Machura 2001Machura , 2003Rennig 2001). Lay judges in mixed tribunals do not tend to follow the trial closely.…”

“…In Russia and Spain, newly minted jury systems have generated controversy with unpopular acquittals (Thaman 2000). The mixed tribunal, in which lay citizens resolve cases together with professional judges, has been roundly criticized as an ineffectual approach, with laypersons derided as "nodders" because of their prevailing tendency to agree with the professional judges (Machura 2003, Kovalev 2004.…”

The Persuasive Power of Russian Courts

“…If the decisions of Russian high courts were known to Russians-a big "if" that we will discuss below-their decisions may act as such elite cues. Despite the aforementioned reputation challenges, the post-Soviet Russian public has made increasing use of courts and has by some indicators increased its respect for them (Solomon and Foglesong 2000;Machura 2003;Popova 2006;Javeline and Baird 2007). Moreover, the Russian public has been said to favor a "strong hand," to dislike excessive freedom that threatens order, and to respect authority (Fleron and Ahl 1998;Bahry 1999).…”

Popular legal participation in China and Japan

“…the Russian lay assessors served no more than two weeks per year, while each German lay assessor serves only eight times each year at the criminal court of Bochum and four times in Frankfurt (Machura, 2003)) there was no such limitation in China's law. This left the courts free to overuse a lay assessor if they so wished.…”