115 gericht), so that legal professionals and laymen together would decide questions of both fact and the law. However, despite rather strong criticism, the jury remained practically unchanged until 1932, when the jury acquired the competence to decide, together with the professional judges, on the sentence. Thus, the French jury had survived the criticismof the late 1800s - a general European phenomenon — and, although rather late from the European perspective, was transformed into a kind of Schöffengericht.^^ Conclusion In France, the jury was a thoroughly political institution and openly considered as such in the nineteenth century. Among other things, it was through opinions about the jury that social and political groups identified themselves politically. The left and the radicals were in favor of extending the jury; the conservatives wished to see it suppressed. The hottest controversies about juries seem to have lost their steamby the 1880s, as the general trend in Europe was towards, on one hand, an incorporation of both the lay and the professional element in Schoffengerichte, and on the other, towards a general professionalization of criminal law. But why was the popularity of the jury declining in the last decades of the 1800s? Why does it seemthat the jury no longer served as an object for heated, passionate debates in France? For the liberal bourgeoisie, the jury was originally an icon of liberty from the domination of the aristocracy and noblesse de robe. It was through the jury that the liberal bourgeoisie wished to protect its interest in the domain of criminal procedure. By the coming of the liberal Third Republic in the last third of the nineteenth century, the social map of France had changed considerably, however. The liberal middle class had in fact become many middle classes. The number of jurists had considerably increased. Whereas noblesse de robe had still been clearly representative of the upper strata of society, and therefore, viewed as potentially hostile by the liberals, in the 1870s the legal profession and the professional judges had already turned into a typical middle-class grouping. Although the recruitment basis of the legal corps remained selective and essentially bourgeois, a “bourgeoisie de robe,”^'^ the 50% growth in the numbers of legal professionals from 1876 to 1906 brought with it a certain broadening of the social basis as well; the new functions attributed to the legal Schnapper 1987 p. 233; Lombard 1993 pp. 273-275. At least by the 1930s, the professional judiciary had clearly acquired a legitimacy unheard of in the days of the Revolution. See Toulemon 1930 pp. 100-102. In practice, the distinction had lost its importance a long time before. Schnapper 1987 p. 225; Lombard 1993 pp. 275-276. In Spain, the juries were abolished. They were also heavily criticized in Italy and Germany, Schnapper 1987 p. 221. Charle 1991 p. 223.
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