What discourages participation in the lay judge system (Saiban'in seido) of Japan? : an interaction effect between the secrecy requirement and social network
The lay judge system, a quasi-jury system, was introduced in Japan from May 2009. This paper attempts to analyze Japanese people’s attitude about the lay judge system by examining whether they show a willingness to serve as a lay judge. The major findings from regression analysis are: (1) In general, people with a spouse inclined to adopt a negative attitude about serving as a lay judge. This tendency is, however, not observed in large cities. (2) Long-time residents and homeowners are more likely to have a negative attitude about serving as a lay judge. These results show that a tightly knitted interpersonal social network discourages people from serving as a lay judge. Because of the life time secrecy obligation and the penalty provisions for those who break this obligation, people with closer interpersonal ties are under greater pressure and strains, leading to larger psychological cost. The obligation and its penalty should be eased to improve people’s attitudes about serving as a lay judge.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
15920.
Find related papers by JEL classification: K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: