For all judges, sovereign and subordinate, if they refuse to hear proof, refuse to do justice: for though the sentence be just, yet the Judges that condemn without hearing the proofs offered are unjust judges and their presumption is but prejudice…In like manner, in ordinary trials of right, twelve men of the common people are the judges and give sentence not only of the fact but of the right…but because they are not supposed to know of the law themselves, there is one that has authority to inform them of it in the particular case they are to judge.
Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, 1651
Here is the link to my original post from 2016,