<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a lawful proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact, which then direct the actions of a judge . It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions . </P> <P> Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in almost all common law lawful systems (Singapore, for example, is an exception), and juries or lay judges have been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases . Only the United States makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases . Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases that make up a tiny share of the overall civil docket (like defamation suits in England and Wales), but true civil jury trials are almost entirely absent elsewhere in the world . Some civil law jurisdictions, however, have arbitration panels where non-legally trained members decide cases in select subject - matter areas relevant to the arbitration panel members' areas of expertise . </P>

Who decides a case if there is no jury