Aspekte der Laiengerichtsbarkeit

Summary

The author is the director of a study group at Warsaw University which, in cooperation with the International Committee on Conflict Resolution headed by Professor Cappelletti, has examined the operation of the Polish Social Conciliatory Councils (SSC). The investigation dealt with the opportunities of non-authoritarian institutions for conflict resolution. Public opinion has been polled and clients of the SCC were interviewed. The councils are either neighborhood or factory institutions dealing with petty crime, disturbances, and minor civil conflicts. They cannot impose any solution that is not accepted voluntarily. Sometimes the SCC takes over a case at the request of the courts, and frequently the solutions suggested by the SCC are declared binding by the courts. In 1974 there were some 6.500 SCCs, dealing each with an average of 14,8 cases per year.

The Public-opinion data discussed in the article suggest a low degree of familiarity, on the part of the population, with the SCC together with the tendency to favor this kind of non-professional conciliation over the professional administration of the legal rules in minor cases. The interviewees more familiar with the SCC were also more likely to prefer it to other modes of conflict resolution.

Finally the author discusses some sociological as well as policy implications of various elements of the institutional character as well as the popular image of the SCCs — namely, the two opposing potentials of an auxiliary agency for the state courts on the one hand and as an institution of conflict mediation among citizens.