Does France use jury trials?
Limited use / mixed courts
Jury trials in France are limited to felonies, with the cour d'assises having 6-9 jurors deciding conviction.
France is one of 16 countries classified “Limited use / mixed courts” for jury trials — 55% of the 29 with data.
Source
- Taken from
- Wikipedia: Jury trial
- Last checked
- 7 July 2026
- How it was classified
- Classified by a language model from the source text, then checked against hand-verified reference countries.
Nearby countries
- Switzerland
- Limited use / mixed courts Only Geneva Canton has genuine jury trials, others use mixed judge-jury courts, but unified code may eliminate them.
- Belgium
- Limited use / mixed courts Belgium uses jury trials through the Court of Assize for serious criminal cases and political crimes.
- Germany
- Not used Jury trials were abolished in 1924; serious cases are heard by mixed panels of professional and lay judges.
- Austria
- Limited use / mixed courts Austria uses jury trials in serious criminal cases, similar to other European civil law jurisdictions.
- Italy
- Limited use / mixed courts Italy uses a court system with laypersons for serious crimes like murder, not general jury trials.
- United Kingdom
- Limited use / mixed courts Jury trials replaced by Diplock courts for terrorism cases, though Diplock courts closed in 2007.
Other laws in France
- Death Penalty
- Fully abolished
- Gun Laws
- Restrictive
- School Corporal Punishment
- Banned
- Military Conscription
- No conscription
A visual reference compiled from Wikipedia’s law-by-country articles, not legal advice. Laws change and summaries simplify — check a primary source before relying on anything here.