Konsensus i rätten : en studie av nämndemäns och lagfarna domares samstämmighet i brottmål

Legitimacy is a necessary precondition for a well-functioning judicial system and it can be achieved in a variety of ways. One way of achieving legitimacy, that the Swedish legislator has chosen, is to constitute a system where lay judges work alongside professional judges in the Swedish courts. Lay participation in the courts are thought to fulfill many purposes and one of them is that they are expected to add new knowledge and additional perspectives to the courts. In other words, the Swedish legislator expect the lay judges to have opinions that, if not contrast then at least, complement the opinions of the professional judge. Nevertheless, previous research on Swedish judgements has found that the four members of the court are completely unanimous in about 95% of the judgments in criminal matters that the Swedish district courts delivers. By conducting a survey study this thesis shows that Swedish lay judges and professional judges has differing opinions in a number of matters that, according to the focal concerns theory, influence their sentencing decisions. The results of the study also show that lay judges, in comparison to the professional judges, are more prone to advocate for imprisonment if the perpetrator is deemed guilty. Furthermore, by combining earlier research and theories on the subject, the thesis proposes an explanation to why such a high level of consensus can be observed in the delivered judgements. Lastly, the thesis discusses what implications the study’s results have on the arguments that the Swedish legislator use to justify Sweden’s system of lay judges