A Reasonable Doubt On Jury Trials

Henning Schroeder, PhD, Professor, College of Pharmacy; Affiliate Professor, College of Liberal Arts (Dept. of German, Nordic, Scandinavian & Dutch), University of Minnesota

Henning Schroeder is a former vice provost and dean of graduate education at the University of Minnesota. His current teaching in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch focuses on cross-cultural comparisons between the United States and Europe. He grew up in West Germany in the 1960s and 70s and received his doctorate in natural science and pharmacology from Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 he returned to Europe and joined the faculty at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in former East Germany. He has been living in Minnesota since 2007 and has recently published articles on how societies in Europe and the United States are dealing with history, heritage and "working through the past." 

Most countries outside the US have abandoned trials with lay juries and replaced them with panels of professional judges. To people watching from Europe, the O.J. Simpson trial or the current Derek Chauvin trial, the selection and questioning of jurors are fascinating spectacles, yet hard to understand. But then jury trials are not the only difference between American common law and Continental European civil/statutory law. Does the jury system really make sense? Since I am not a card carrying legal expert I very much look forward to answers from the audience and a lively discussion.