Are bench trials or jury trials more constructive to socialism?
Most AES countries use a bench trial system for criminal law, but this seems like possibly taking power away from the workers in important matters. What was the thought process behind using bench trials for criminal court in AES nations?
(For reference, a bench trial is where one or more judges/magistrates decide the outcome of a trial as opposed to a jury of people)
Out of curiosity, I googled China’s system. It appears that for serious criminal trials, they bring in people called “assessors” who form a panel with the judge. If the panel is a panel of 7, then the assessors are the finders of fact, whereas the judge is the finder of law. The assessors are randomly selected (although there is a final appointment process once the random list has been generated) and the criteria for selection explicitly excludes lawyers.
So, these assessors effectively are just jurors like we have in a US court system.
In my opinion: The role of a court is to uphold the law, interpreting the legal code or relevant cases in statutory or common law jurisdictions, respectively.
If the workers have had full power in drafting the legal code, so that it is purely proletariat in spirit and content, and the judges or magistrates have been appointed by the workers or their representatives, I believe it is better to have people less susceptible to manipulation tactics by counsel, or to be less aware of implicit biases that may lead to unjust outcomes.
If the law is just, bench trials would lead to fairer results than jury trials, in my very uninformed opinion.
Not sure if I agree or disagree but it's a reasonable take. One would hope that judges would have a deeper training in things like biases and the law itself, of course. Tossing a bunch of random into the middle of the process can gum it up in that way. I thought that the post above in this thread where in China the jury are "finders of fact" was an interesting compromise.
The bigger difference is whether the system is inquisitorial or adversarial. I'm guessing AES countries are inquisitorial because of the French influence.
The role of public prosecutors may differ depending on the legal tradition adopted in a particular country. Two types of legal traditions dominate the nature of investigation and adjudication around the world: adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems. Common law countries use an adversarial system to determine facts in the adjudication process. The prosecution and defence compete against each other, and the judge serves as a referee to ensure fairness to the accused, and that the legal rules criminal procedure followed. The adversarial system assumes that the best way to get to the truth of a matter is through a competitive process to determine the facts and application of the law accurately.
The inquisitorial system is associated with civil law legal systems, and it has existed for many centuries. It is characterized by extensive pre-trial investigation and interrogations with the objective to avoid bringing an innocent person to trial. The inquisitorial process can be described as an official inquiry to ascertain the truth, whereas the adversarial system uses a competitive process between prosecution and defence to determine the facts. The inquisitorial process grants more power to the judge who oversees the process, whereas the judge in the adversarial system serves more as an arbiter between claims of the prosecution and defence
IMO a more inquisitorial system is necessary but not sufficient for a revolutionary society
Edit: i seem to have gotten too focused on "Most AES countries use a bench trial system for criminal law", and answered a different question than the one you asked.
Interesting, I thought the USSR used a panel of judges, but it looks like I just got terminology mixed up