Mike Fox
Mike Fox
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the boom of muskets at Lexington and Concord ignited a revolution. The “shot heard round the world” led to the founding law of a new nation: a Constitution that enshrined liberty, due process, self-governance, and a profound suspicion of unchecked power. As we commemorate this pivotal anniversary, we must not forget how the Framers’ revolutionary ideals transformed American law.
The American colonists had grown more and more frustrated with British subjugation. They were oppressed by unjust laws imposed by a distant Parliament devoid of colonial representation. Their rights as Englishmen were infringed upon by the perfunctory adjudication of alleged violations in admiralty courts. Those admiralty courts lacked juries, and the colonists understood the absence of juries as eliminating a crucial safeguard against tyranny. The Framers recognized that trial by jury was a cornerstone of basic fairness and self-governance; furthermore, the jury itself served as a vital check on potential abuses of power.
The Framers envisioned the jury as far more than a fact-finding body. They viewed the jury as a critical bulwark against government oppression. They had seen biased verdicts from judges beholden to the Crown, and so they enshrined the right to trial by a jury of one’s peers in the Constitution. That is why Article III of the Constitution requires “all” federal crimes to be tried by jury; that is why the Sixth Amendment guarantees a public trial by an impartial jury in “all criminal prosecutions.”
In short, the Framers understood jury trials as a bedrock of criminal adjudication. Today, however, that understanding has been supplanted by our modern system of assembly-line, often highly coercive plea bargaining. This shift stems from the many tools that prosecutors now use to leverage guilty pleas, as well as the disengagement of judges who are fundamentally unwilling to police the modern plea-bargain system. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/lexington-jury-box-250-years-defending-liberty