5 ms·

I always found the idea of jury trials terrifying. We make legal education very hard, very thorough, we teach prospective lawyers about subtle nuances of law,

I always found the idea of jury trials terrifying. We make legal education very hard, very thorough, we teach prospective lawyers about subtle nuances of law, guilt, evidence, bias, epistemology even. We make them do mootings. Then we say lawyers are the very people who cannot sit in juries, and instead random people are to judge. Actually worse than random - people who have better things to do try to get out of it, or are resentful that they couldn't. It's a bit like having highly educated doctors explain symptoms, possible diseases, as well as a crash course in biology, immunology and statistics to a panel of randos, who then vote on the best treatment for the patient. Its only slightly worse than judges and prosecutors under reelection pressure though...

tzs 11mo ago
I don't know about the UK, but in the US lawyers can be jurors. The main point of a jury from the "arrive at the legally correct solution to the issue before the court" point of view is to settle questions that are questions of fact rather than questions of law. Generally in a legal dispute you have two parties who disagree over the underlying facts. For example I say your drone broke my window and I want you to pay for a new window. You say your drone was not flying at the time my window broke. Whether or not your drone broke my windows is a question of fact, not a question of law. Once it is decided whether or not your drone broke me window, then applying the law is straightforward. The difficulty is determining whether or not your drone broke my window. Once the jury has decided on all the questions of fact they have to apply the law tp them, but for that the court will have given them instructions. Generally that is in the form of a form they can fill out that's basically a decision tree. They just have to fill in what they decided are the facts, follow the branches, and they end up with the correct legal result for those facts.
- rich_sasha 11mo ago
  Sure. But "fact" in a court of law means "facts subject to a legally-sanctioned epistemology". Every now and then you read about a judge instructing the jury to disregard some evidence, because it turns out to be inadmissible. Are random people really capable of doing this? And, likewise, leaving their biases at the courtroom doorstep? I have my doubts. And yes, I believe trained lawyers are excluded from jury duty in the UK. But even if not, the average juror will not have had any training in discerning bias, weighing evidence, statistics etc.
gizajob 11mo ago
That’s the whole point though - it’s a cohort of your peers who are regular normal people who really aren’t trained being guided by the available evidence presented by those who are trained. There should be enough evidence of your guilt to convince 12 of them that you committed the crime, rather than the state and the feudal lord saying you did it and locking you up forever.
- rich_sasha 11mo ago
  My experience of the general public is that they aren't very good at nuanced thinking. And crime, or legal disputes in general, are often nuanced.
  - austinjp 11mo ago
    You are the general public.
    - rich_sasha 11mo ago
      You are confirming my concern.
      - austinjp 11mo ago
        How?
  - gizajob 11mo ago
    They’re as lacking in nuance now as they have been for the past 800 hundred years and it’s the system we’ve gone with.

tzs 11mo ago

I don't know about the UK, but in the US lawyers can be jurors. The main point of a jury from the "arrive at the legally correct solution to the issue before the court" point of view is to settle questions that are questions of fact rather than questions of law. Generally in a legal dispute you have two parties who disagree over the underlying facts. For example I say your drone broke my window and I want you to pay for a new window. You say your drone was not flying at the time my window broke. Whether or not your drone broke my windows is a question of fact, not a question of law. Once it is decided whether or not your drone broke me window, then applying the law is straightforward. The difficulty is determining whether or not your drone broke my window. Once the jury has decided on all the questions of fact they have to apply the law tp them, but for that the court will have given them instructions. Generally that is in the form of a form they can fill out that's basically a decision tree. They just have to fill in what they decided are the facts, follow the branches, and they end up with the correct legal result for those facts.

rich_sasha 11mo ago
Sure. But "fact" in a court of law means "facts subject to a legally-sanctioned epistemology". Every now and then you read about a judge instructing the jury to disregard some evidence, because it turns out to be inadmissible. Are random people really capable of doing this? And, likewise, leaving their biases at the courtroom doorstep? I have my doubts. And yes, I believe trained lawyers are excluded from jury duty in the UK. But even if not, the average juror will not have had any training in discerning bias, weighing evidence, statistics etc.

gizajob 11mo ago

That’s the whole point though - it’s a cohort of your peers who are regular normal people who really aren’t trained being guided by the available evidence presented by those who are trained. There should be enough evidence of your guilt to convince 12 of them that you committed the crime, rather than the state and the feudal lord saying you did it and locking you up forever.

rich_sasha 11mo ago
My experience of the general public is that they aren't very good at nuanced thinking. And crime, or legal disputes in general, are often nuanced.
- austinjp 11mo ago
  You are the general public.
  - rich_sasha 11mo ago
    You are confirming my concern.
    - austinjp 11mo ago
      How?
- gizajob 11mo ago
  They’re as lacking in nuance now as they have been for the past 800 hundred years and it’s the system we’ve gone with.