Derec
Contributor
People elect the representatives that pass the laws. Also laws against murder are not some oligarchic conspiracy that needs to be reined in by "jury nullification". The problem with "jury nullification" is that it is arbitrary. It's all about whether the jury likes the perp.As Aristotle said: "Oligarchies have elections, Democracies have lotteries."
A jury is the only function of our government that is determined by a lottery: the genuine participation and exercise of power by randomly chosen citizens.
As long as our laws are made by oligarchs, who answer to special interests, not the people, juries are absolutely essential, as they are the only limit that ordinary citizens can apply to the oligarchs.
Most countries have moved away from traditional jury trials and either have judge trials or some sort of hybrid system without having become "totalitarian horrors". For example German courts use both professional and lay judges. The latter are different than jurors as they go through some training and hear a number of cases, not just one.Dare I ask what sort of totalitarian horror Derec would propose to replace juries with?
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A jury is the worst system for a trial except for all the others tried so far.
Most other countries would tend to disagree.