Genuine question: what countries are you referring to? Also, I'm unfamiliar with any philosophy that posits that jury trials are lesser to judge trials. Isn't the whole point of trial by jury that juries are less likely to be partial than judges ("professionalism" doesn't stop a judge from being corrupt or from a classist selection bias in which judges are chosen from the upper echelons of society and thus biased accordingly)? No doubt there are tradeoffs between judges and juries, I just thought the consensus was "juries are fairer".