Abstract
The objective of this study is to compare the pros and cons of the use of lay people in the judiciary in the post-war period with the period after February 1948. Lay people had been used in the judiciary in the Czech lands since the nineteenth century, although the trend really took off following the liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1945, and further after the communist coup in February 1948.
In the field of retributive justice, lay people were meant especially to be proponents of tough popular justice to enable fast implementation of purges and a return to normal life. In reality, lay people proved to be cool-headed judges, more-or-less moving away from initial tough sentences to fair retribution.
In extraordinary people's courts, the people's judges often incorrectly voted against the Chairman of the Senate, and similar to after the popularisation of justice were unable to understand some more complex facts of cases. Over the years, the influence of the lay judges was restricted, and the institute of the single judge was implemented within Czechoslovak law.