To fulfill its responsibility for the functioning of the courts and the supervision of state marshals, state notaries, and the national bar organization, the Ministry of Justice is divided into six directorates: civil courts, military courts, studies and legislation, personnel, administration, and planning and accounting. In addition, the ministry includes a corps of inspectors, an office of legal affairs, the State Notary Office, and a lawyer and legal expert service. The court system includes the Supreme Court, _judet_ courts, lower courts, military courts, and local judicial commissions. The Constitution places the judiciary under the authority of the Grand National Assembly; and between assembly sessions, under the authority of the Council of State. The Supreme Court, seated in Bucharest, exercises general control over the judiciary activities of all lower courts. Members of the Supreme Court are professional judges appointed by the Grand National Assembly to four-year terms of office. The Supreme Court functions as an appeals court for sentences pronounced in lower tribunals and, in certain matters specified by law, may act as a court of first instance. It may also issue guidance, in the form of directives, on legal and constitutional questions for the judicial actions of lower courts and the administrative functions of government agencies. To fulfill its responsibilities, the Supreme Court is divided into three sections: civil, criminal, and military. Each of these sections is presided over by a panel of three judges, and plenary sessions of the entire court are held at least once every three months in the presence of the minister of justice for the purpose of issuing guidance directives. With the territorial-administrative reorganization of February 1968, the jurisdictions of the former regional and district courts were restructured to correspond to the new administrative units. Accordingly, there are thirty-nine _judet_ courts and the municipal court of Bucharest, which has _judet_ court status. Each court on this level is presided over by a panel of two judges and three lay jurors, known as people's assessors, and decisions are made by majority vote. People's assessors were first introduced in December 1947 and given additional legal status in 1952 by the Grand National Assembly's Law on the Organization of Justice. The law required these lay assessors to be Romanian citizens and at least twenty-three years of age. Most of the people's assessors are appointed by the PCR or by one of the district bodies of the mass organizations (see ch. 9).