Lay judges’ political affiliations affect verdicts in Swedish criminal cases
Significant biases exist in the Swedish ‘nämndeman’ system that are closely associated with the political platforms of the lay judges’ party affiliation, a new study from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg shows. Amongst the study’s main findings are that convictions of defendants with distinctly Arabic sounding names increase substantially when they are randomly assigned a Swedish Democrat (anti-immigration party) nämndeman while convictions for cases with a female victim increased with presence of a Vänster (left party) nämndeman.Most justice systems