Dikasterion

The dikasterion was the system of popular jury courts of Classical Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, standing alongside the Assembly and the Council of Five Hundred as one of the three central institutions of Athenian democracy. The courts had no professional judges, prosecutors or lawyers; ordinary male citizens over thirty, called dikastai, were instead selected by lot from an annual pool of six thousand to serve as jurors on panels that typically numbered 201, 401 or 501, though major political trials could draw 1,500 or more. After timed speeches from both sides, with no formal group discussion, jurors cast a secret ballot with no possibility of appeal, and through procedures such as the graphe paranomon the courts could annul decrees of the Assembly and hold magistrates accountable, giving them a central role in Athenian civic life beyond resolving disputes between citizens. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/