Explaining the Presence of the Criminal Jury in Democratic Political Systems

Although there is substantial literature on the connection between juries and democracy, there is relatively little empirical research on the nature of this connection. This project examines the question of why some democracies have juries while others do not using quantitative analysis with a large number of countries. It examines data on the adjudication systems of 91 democracies for the year 2009. The hypotheses tested are that juries would be more likely to be found in democracies that are former British colonies, have a common law legal tradition, have lower societal fractionalization, have greater wealth, have more educated citizens, are stronger democracies, and have been democratic longer. The results confirm that having a common law legal system or a system with common law elements does have a positive effect on jury usage. Democracies with higher ethnic and religious fractionalization are more likely to have jury systems, while countries with higher linguistic fractionalization are less likely to have juries. Literacy, which serves as a proxy for education, has a negative effect on jury usage. The remaining variables did not have statistically significant effects.