ABSTRACT
Regardless of how criminal justice systems or criminal trials are organised, the ultimate decisions remain in the hands of people. We can identify two schools of thought as to who those decision-makers should be. The first argues for such decisions to be left to the wisest and most experienced people in society: they would be best placed to reach a balanced judgement on the offence and the offender. This is the ‘patriarch’ doctrine. The other view is that such powers should be reserved for people who are as ‘ordinary’ as the person standing trial: people who are most similar to the offender might be best suited to judge their behaviour. This represents the ‘peer’ point of view. The idea of judges as arbitrators obviously corresponds to the former idea, whereas juries are associated with the latter notion of their peers judging wrongdoers.
