Several European countries have a first instance ‘mixed’ labour court, that is a judicial panel comprising a professional judge and two or more lay judges, the latter with experience as employees or employers/managers. The lay judges’ main contribution is their workplace knowledge, but they act in a juridical setting where legal norms prevail, so does the professional judge, despite being in a minority, dominate? This article seeks to address this question by focusing on first instance labour courts in Great Britain, Germany and France. Theories of differential power, particularly status characteristics theory, and previous empirical research indicate that professional judges dominate, but our findings are more nuanced. Based on 177 interviews in three countries, we find that professional judge dominance varies according to the country’s institutional context and the salience of lay judges’ workplace knowledge. These institutional differences, however, are mediated by the attitudes of the judicial actors. Many interviewees noted that some lay judges were more prepared to challenge the professional judge than others, while others observed that some professional judges were more inclusive than others.

中文翻译：

---

欧洲劳工法庭的非专业和专业法官：专业法官占主导地位吗？

一些欧洲国家有一个初审“混合”劳动法庭，这是一个司法小组，由一名专业法官和两名或两名以上的非专业法官组成，后者具有作为雇员或雇主/经理的经验。非专业法官的主要贡献是他们的工作知识，但他们在法律规范主导的司法环境中行动，那么职业法官尽管是少数，但占主导地位吗？本文试图通过关注英国、德国和法国的一审劳动法庭来解决这个问题。差别权力理论，特别是地位特征理论和以往的实证研究表明，职业法官占主导地位，但我们的研究结果更加微妙。基于三个国家的 177 次采访，我们发现职业法官的主导地位因国家的制度背景和非专业法官的工作场所知识的突出程度而异。然而，这些制度差异是由司法行为者的态度所调节的。许多受访者指出，一些非专业法官比其他人更愿意挑战专业法官，而另一些人则观察到一些专业法官比其他人更具包容性。