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Apr. 20, 2024, 2:19 AM ET (New York Times)
jury, historic legal institution in which a group of laypersons participate in deciding cases brought to trial. Its exact characteristics and powers depend on the laws and practices of the countries, provinces, or states in which it is found, and there is considerable variation. Basically, however, it recruits laypersons at random from the widest population for the trial of a particular case and allows them to deliberate in secrecy, to reach a decision by a vote, and to present its verdict without giving reasons. (In 2017 the U.S. Supreme Court held that the federal rule that prevents former jurors from testifying about the deliberations of the jury on which they served could be suspended in cases in which there is clear evidence that a juror made statements during deliberations indicating that his or her vote to convict the defendant was significantly motivated by racial animus.) Throughout its history, it has perhaps been both overpraised as a charter of liberty and overcriticized as a reliance on incompetent amateurs in the administration of justice.
History and use
The origin of the jury is disputed. It may have been indigenous to England or have been taken there by the Norman invaders in 1066. Originally, the jurors were neighbourhood witnesses who passed judgment on the basis of what they themselves knew. The breakdown of medieval society and the growth of the towns changed the role of the jury, which came to be called upon to determine the facts of the case on the basis of the evidence presented in court. The availability of the jury in the king’s courts may have been a key factor in centralizing the country’s courts under the king and in creating the common law. By the 15th century, nonrational modes of trial such as ordeal, in which the defendant was subjected to various tortures, were replaced by the jury trial, which became the established form of trial for both criminal and civil cases at common law.
Two forces extended the jury outside England. The expansion of the British Empire brought the jury to Asia, Africa, and the American continent, and the French Revolution and its aftermath brought the jury, as a symbol of popular government, to the European continent. Juries were first established in France itself; through Napoleon, the jury was introduced first in the Rhineland, then in Belgium, and finally in most of the remaining German states, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Luxembourg. However, the last two countries abolished it immediately after Napoleon’s defeat. In each of these countries, use of the jury was limited to trials of major crimes and of political crimes against the state.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the jury was weakened in a variety of ways. For example, in 1850 Prussia removed treason from its jurisdiction; in 1851 the duchy of Nassau removed all political crimes; in 1923 Czechoslovakia removed treason and, one year later, libel; in 1919 Hungary suspended trial by jury entirely and never restored it. Germany abandoned the jury in 1924. Both the Soviet bloc and the fascist states abolished it outright; France never restored the jury abolished during the German occupation in the 1940s, and Japan did away with its short-lived jury courts in 1943. After World War II, Austria reintroduced the jury in a weakened form.
Thus, the history of the jury shows that the effort to introduce it outside the Anglo-American legal orbit largely failed. In England its use was limited by statute to a small category of cases. Consequently, the United States emerged as the home of the jury system for both criminal and civil cases; more than 90 percent of all jury trials in the world occur in the United States.
Use of the jury in the United States depends on two factors: the degree to which it is available as a matter of right and the degree to which the parties choose to use it. The availability of the jury trial varied from state to state, but, in 1968 in Duncan v. Louisiana, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a jury trial is a constitutional right in all criminal cases in which the penalty may exceed six months’ imprisonment. In civil cases its constitutional status is more various, but jury trial generally is available in all U.S. states and in the federal courts. The practice of allowing the parties to waive a jury trial also varies widely from region to region.
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Jury procedures
Selection
Historically, there were requirements of property and competence for jury service. The genuine random selection of jurors from the general population (to achieve a cross section of the community) gained ground and became the principle of selection in the federal courts and most state courts. Most jurisdictions exempt some groups from jury service (e.g., police officers, lawyers, doctors, etc.). All jurisdictions excuse jurors if the service imposes undue hardship.
The commitment of important decisions to a random group of laypersons has been moderated, particularly in the United States, by an elaborate screening process known as voir dire, which is conducted by trial counsel at the inception of a trial. The law permits counsel to challenge prospective jurors either for cause (if there is specific likelihood of bias) or, for a limited number, “peremptorily” (i.e., without having to give a reason). American trial tradition attaches a great deal of significance to the strategies of juror selection, and in high-profile cases the lawyers’ voir dire examination has sometimes extended for several weeks.
