We, The Jury: The Jury System And The Ideal Of Democracy

by Jeffrey B. Abramson

Explores the evolution of the jury system from colonial days to the present, debates fundamental questions about the jury system, and examines cases from American history to show how juries form an essential element of democracy

Genres: Law

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2000

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surveys the changes in juries over the past few hundred years. Explores who gets seated, who gets excluded; who gets the benefit of jury nullification, who does not. Ends with an attack on scientific jury selection and acknowledgement that the death sentence is imposed disproportionately on the basis of race.

There’s parts I really liked. One of the opening passages has a lot of power. “Trial by jury is about the best of democracy and about the worst of democracy. Jurors in Athens sentenced Socrates to death for religious crimes against the state, but in England, jurors went to prison themselves rather than convict the Quaker William Penn. Juries convicted women as witches in Salem, but they resisted witch hunts for communists in Washington. Juries in the American South freed vigilantes who lynched African-Americans, but in the North they sheltered fugitive slaves and the abolitionists who helped them escape.” (1).

The book took me aback quite a bit, though, by how matter of fact it was about terrible things. I learned from this book that several of the jurors in the Scottsboro boys trial held out for the death sentence for a 13 year old even though the prosecution hadn’t sought it. (111-12). I wanted more horror at that, or the fact Emmitt Till’s murderers were acquitted. Or that “Into the 1980s, the District Attorney’s Office in Montgomery County, Texas, apparently used a manual that explicitly directed prosecutors to strike blacks from the jury panel in cases involving black defendants. Tidbits about other minority groups included the advice that ‘Orientals . . . tend to go along with the majority’ and that Mexican-Americans tend to be “passive.”” (quoting Wenke, Art of Selecting a Jury, 78). Or the fact that we have had known conclusively since at least 1991 that the death penalty is imposed in a grossly racially disproportional fashion. (231). “No one intended the overall pattern and hence no one was legally responsible for it. Hundreds of different jury decisions did not add up to a consistent state ‘policy’ to discriminate.” (231-32). The author does not countenance any of that. But he does not condemn it either.

A mixed bag. Not a good bus book.

[Matt Cyprian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good history of American justice. Absolute must-read for critical thinking on libertarianism, the founding fathers and conflicts leading up the the American Revolution, and jury democracy.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the section about jury selection (history of, "scientific methods" of picking people for certain characteristics, etc).