People's Court (Soviet Union)

A people's court in the late Soviet Union was a court of first instance that handled the majority of civil and criminal offenses, as well as certain administrative law offenses. Cases were decided by a collegium made up of one people's judge and two people's assessors. The assessors had duties similar to those of jurors, but unlike in most jury systems they decided both any objections and the verdict together with the judge. In early Soviet Russia and the early Soviet Union the term was used for any court of the new Soviet legal system that replaced the legal system of the Russian Empire, and there were then several levels of such courts, matching the administrative division of the country: local, okrug and oblast people's courts.