Nämndemannasystemet - en undersökning om legal och demokratisk förutsebarhet

Sammanfattning: Lay judges have been able to influence the judgments in our courts for more than 800 years. Their influence has varied somewhat over the centuries but never have they had such great judicial power as today. In District Courts there are usually four judges, one of whom is legally trained and three who are lay judges. In the voting process every judge has the same power. The city council decides who are going to be lay judges and even though people with no political connection can and should be recruited, it's very rare that lay judges do not belong to any political party. For a state to be considered a constitutional state there are among other things requirements that people of the state can be ensured that everyone is treated equally before the law, that there is an independent and functioning judicial system and that the judiciary is independent and impartial. The constitutional state must also ensure the rule of law for the people, which among other things mean that no one may be sentenced without support of the law and that no one is prosecuted or convicted without sufficient evidence. An important prerequisite for the rule of law is legal predictability, which means that people in different situations should be able to know what the law expects from them. Legal predictability also requires that courts apply the law correctly. There are many arguments both for and against the lay judge system and the motives of the laws, government investigations and the doctrine raise the following in particular: For Citizen participation Confidence in the courts Pedagogical reasons Contribution of life experience Reflection of the general perception of the law Cheaper Against Lack of legal knowledge Risk of subjectivism Risk of politicization Lower efficiency and inferior methodological progress In three surveys I investigate some of these arguments and examine how the lay judge system affects the legal and the democratic predictability. In the first study I examined how the lay judges voted at nearly 3 500 times and the purpose was to see if lay judges of any party more often want to convict/free the accused compared to lay judges from the other parties and compared to the legally trained judge. Though I could not see that lay judges of any party in greater extent wanted to convict or free the accused. However, I dicovered that the lay judges almost always voted the same way as the legally trained judge. In the second study I examined 125 judgments where at least one judge dissented. I examined how each lay judge voted compared to the other lay judges and the legally trained judge. I did so to see if lay judges in general more often agree/disagree with lay judges from any particular party (block) compared to the lay judges from any other party (block) or the legally trained judge. It turned out that the lay judges agreed/disagreed with the other lay judges and the legally trained judge to the same extent regardless of which parties (blocks) they belong. In the third study, I gave five multiple-choice questions to 100 people. In this way I wanted to survey people's knowledge of and relation to the lay judge system. As the arguments for the lay judge system in a great extent are based on democratic aspects I wanted to examine whether people's influence in the judgments, the transparency of the legal system and the confidence in this actually increases through the lay judge system. The answers I received suggest that is not the case. The purpose of my studies was to see how the lay judge system affects the legal and the democratic predictability. My first two studies examine whether the lay judge system bring politicization to the court and thereby reduces the legal predictability. The studies indicate that this is not the case. My third study shows that the lay judge system does not increase the democratic predictability. My conclusion is therefore that the argument that the lay judge system carries a risk of politicization, and thus a decrease in the legal certainty, should not be exaggerated. However, the lay judge system does not bring an increased democratic predictability and thus the arguments for retaining the lay judge system as it is today are very weak compared to the arguments for abolishing it.