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The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amend
by stan_rogers 15y ago
The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which provides only for "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".
- colanderman 15y agoInteresting. I could have sworn we learned the "jury of your peers" thing in school.
- pash 15y agoThe "jury of your peers" language, whose origin is the Magna Carta [1], is included in the constitutions of a number of states, so the concept directly pertains in many American jurisdictions. There is also a considerable body of federal case law applying the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the process of jury selection. Since 1880, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a black man's conviction for murder due to the systematic exclusion of blacks from local juries [1], federal courts have consistently ruled that jurors must be selected indiscriminately from eligible members of the community. This is very close to the concept of a "jury of your peers". 1. See clause 29 of the 1297 document: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_carta/translation.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_ca... ; the further origin is the first Magna Carta of 1215. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia