Composition of the Criminal Courts Cover Image

Структура судских већа у кривичним судовима
Composition of the Criminal Courts

Author(s): Veljko Turanjanin, Dragana Čvorović
Subject(s): Criminal Law
Published by: Правни факултет Универзитета у Београду
Keywords: Jury; Mixed court; Professional judges; Lay judges

Summary/Abstract: The composition of a criminal court stands as one of the most interesting issues in the comparative law. Different viewpoints when it comes to the need of including non-professional citizens in the contemporary criminal procedure have contributed to interesting approaches related to regulating this issue. First of all, there are original jury systems that are a feature related mainly to the Anglo-American legal systems, but whose ideas have found their place in the European legislature as well. Furthermore, there are countries where the trial body stands as a separate authority, which consists of professional judges and lay judges, whereas some of the countries have both professional judges and lay judges, the first being in charge of resolving legal issues, and the second ones being in charge of factual issues. There are many articles devoted to the jury systems in the world, but in a very small proportion of them we could find solutions from the mixed court of the Balkan countries. Mixed court is one of the features continental countries. The authors compare Balkan countries, where Slovenia and Croatia being the European Union Members, whereas the rest of them are in the process of accession. Thereby, some of the countries strive to get their courts become more professional by leaving out citizens non-professional from the composition of trial chamber, while some of them have kept them, whereby the scope of their jurisdiction varies from one country to another. Today, it is a great question whether a mixed court will survive legislative changes, due to the criticism of the jurists and non-jurists.

  • Issue Year: 66/2018
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 187-219
  • Page Count: 33
  • Language: Serbian