The Daily

What Is A Jury Trial (No. 1)?

This work is in the public domain and was originally published in Life.
Battle of Hastings (1066), as portrayed by Philip James de Loutherbourg.

The Jury consequently invests the people … with the direction of society.

            Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

This series is about jury trials. Conflict has been used to resolve disputes for centuries – perhaps as long as time itself. Before trials, opposing sides would meet on a field for a battle or duel. In order to spare the attendant blood and loss of life – and to even the score for those not strong enough to lift a sword themselves – humans engineered another way to resolve their disputes.

The origin of our jury trial should be told by original sources. So I’ll try to let the founders and other giants of history speak for themselves. Once this background is set, I’ll share some more recent examples of use and abuse of our dispute resolution and why we’d best be vigilant about protecting our right to trial by jury. Then we can talk about Nancy Grace and Al Pacino.

Early America adopted English common law and a long history of cherished rights, including the right to trial by jury – which dates back to 1215. In that year, Pope Innocent III issued an order validating a person’s right to a trial by peers. That same year, at Runnymede in England, King John was forced on a battlefield to sign Magna Carta – the ancient pact he made with English Barons, including a stipulation to man’s right to “the lawful judgment of his peers”. These are the events that first set rule of law above kings.

In the ensuing centuries, the rights signed off by King John were cemented in English practice – to the point where jury trials became a vital component in the pantheon of fundamental rights Pilgrims brought to the shores of America hundreds of years later.

We “…covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politick; for our better ordering, & preservation & furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hearof to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal laws, ordinances and acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience”

            The Mayflower Compact (1620)

By the time it came to write a national Constitution, most American colonies already had a “Bill of Rights” enumerating the fundamental liberties. For instance, Massachusetts’ “Body of Liberties” (1641) and Virginia’s Bill of Rights (1776) both guaranteed the right to trial by jury.

A Federal Bill of Rights didn’t come until after the Constitution was written (the bitter Ratification Convention of 1787-88), when Congress approved the first ten Amendments in 1789. The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to trial by jury.

When the English adopted trial by jury, they were a semi barbarous people; they have since become one of the most enlightened nations on earth, and their attachment to this institution seems to have increased with their increasing cultivation. They have emigrated and colonized every part of the habitable globe; some have formed colonies, others independent states, the mother country has maintained its monarchical constitution; many of its offspring have founded powerful republics; but everywhere they have boasted of the privilege of trial by jury. They have established it, or hastened to re-establish it, in all their settlements. A judicial institution which thus obtains suffrages of a great people for so long a series of ages, which is zealously reproduced at every stage of civilization, in all the climates of the earth, and under every form of government, cannot be contrary to the spirit of justice.

            Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Page 281.

Bored yet? You may want to stay tuned in for the rest of the story. Sometime between now and when you die, you will either be in front of a jury box, on a witness stand, or in a defendant’s or prosecutor’s chair, and how critical all of this is will be all too apparent. In this particular toolbox, knowing now is ALWAYS better than later.