BonnieDundee

In the Magna Carta and for centuries Juries were allowed to not only rule on the guilt of a defendent but also to decide on whether the law was a valid one. Today some US states still keep up this ancient right and I think we should reassert here because it will allow the people to better police the state and get out will recognised.

The American Individualist Lysander Spooner wrote a great tract on this subject which I thought I'd share.

TRIAL BY JURY

For more than six hundred years --- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 --- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a “palladium of liberty” --- a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government --- they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.

But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them [*6] to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.

That the rights and duties of jurors must necessarily be such as are here claimed for them, will be evident when it is considered what the trial by jury is, and what is its object.

“The trial by jury,” then, is a “trial by the country” ---that is by the people as distinguished from a trial the government.

It was anciently called “trial per pais” that is, “trial by the country.” And now, in every criminal trial, the jury are told that the accused “has, for trial, put himself upon the country; which country you (the jury) are.”

The object of this trial “by the country,” or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or “the country,” judge of and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government’s judging of and determining its own powers over the people. How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government; if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?

Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other --- or at least no more accurate --- definition of a despotism than this.

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"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."
-Bruce Schneier

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.

Smidgey

Indeed it should come back. What's great about it is that the jury are not legislating or creating anything, merely attacking and destroying.

If jury nulification were more common in Britain then I have little doubt that some absurd laws (such as the cannabis laws) would not longer exist.

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How vain is man, who boasts in fight the valour of gigantic might!

-Georg Friedrich Händel

Mikeuk

After the responsible professional people have managed to get themselves excused you are likely to end up with total dross on juries. I won't repeat what the late Peter Carter-Ruck once said to me about London juries as it would severely upset the anti-racist brigade.

A total non-starter.

BonnieDundee

Yes that elitist and bigoted passage you just put forward is a complete non-starter. I see little evidence that juries are "dross" and in fact allowing nullification is likely to make people more eager to serve on them.

I suppose you'd prefer that an Eton and Oxbridge judge presided over all trials and juries were scrapped.

And are you not anti-racist?

__________________
"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."
-Bruce Schneier

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.

BonnieDundee

To me it allows an instant popular control of gov't which is far more effective than any we currently have.

__________________
"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."
-Bruce Schneier

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.

The Bear

I do wonder what the response would be from either the prosecution or the defence (as appropriate) if a jury did go against the instructions of the judge.

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I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

Populist Lee

Jury Nullification would logically go hand-in-hand with a system of Direct Democracy.

I'm all in favour!

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ENGLISH POPULISM
Stands as the only obstacle in the path of the Plutocrats
who seek to reduce all the Peoples of the World
to Economic and Political Slavery under Globalism


POPULISM MEANS WHAT YOU WANT IS WHAT YOU GET

Populist Lee

Make Jury Service absolutely compulsory if a person is selected [and not barred on medical or criminal grounds] - - no getting off for the professionals.
I agree it's too easy for them to make excuses these days.

__________________
ENGLISH POPULISM
Stands as the only obstacle in the path of the Plutocrats
who seek to reduce all the Peoples of the World
to Economic and Political Slavery under Globalism


POPULISM MEANS WHAT YOU WANT IS WHAT YOU GET

Tom Collier

A Judge can only instruct a jury to return not guilty verdicts on a charge if there is no evidence before a court, after the prosecution have had the chance to make their case, on which in his view a jury could reasonably convict. Otherwise he cannot order an acquital or conviction. In jury trials judges can only direct as to law, not to fact, and to summarise. I agree that if juries thought they could vote down stupid laws and not just apply them dutifully to those guilty, the laws might get altered quicker.

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Tom Collier