The 7th Amendment right to a jury trial may be a constitutional "freedom," but I doubt much it extends either liberty or efficiency. Originally a Norman innovation, the jury was a collection of interested, knowledgeable neighbors gathered together to decide a case. Obviously, today that is precisely the sort of thing that would get one disqualified, however, at the time, it made jurors efficient decisionmakers. Considering the complexity of law today, however, I don't see how one can argue that jurors can (a) assurably and predictably act unemotionally when finding fact or (b) understand the technical vagaries of the law. Jury nullification exists, sure, but that swings both ways--e.g., klansmen acquitted in the South. Nor are judges agents of "the state" in the sense that they inevitably desire to expand state power. They are mostly legal scholars and practitioners with varying ideological views cabined by the authority of their office. I guess my problem is that while jury trials might be a civil or political right, I've yet to hear them defended on utilitarian or natural right grounds.
Caloo Calay,
dustin kenall
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