Why Jury Responsibility Issues: A Citizen’s Information to Constitutional Motion

It’s simple to overlook how essential the jury actually is to America. The suitable to be a juror is without doubt one of the basic rights assured to all eligible residents. The suitable to trial by jury helped spark the American Revolution, was shortly adopted on the Constitutional Conference, and is the one proper that seems in each the Structure and the Invoice of Rights. However for many of us, a jury summons is an unwelcome inconvenience. Who has time for jury responsibility? Now we have issues to do.

In Why Jury Responsibility Issues, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reminds us that whether or not we prefer it or not, we’re all constitutional actors. Jury responsibility supplies a possibility to replicate on that constitutional accountability. Combining American historical past, constitutional regulation, and private expertise, the ebook engages residents within the deeper which means of jury service. Interweaving constitutional ideas into the precise jury expertise, this ebook is a handbook for these Individuals who need to enrich the jury expertise. It seeks to reconnect bizarre residents to the constitutional character of a nation by specializing in the essential, and largely ignored, democratic classes of the jury.

Jury responsibility is a shared American custom. It connects folks throughout class and race, creates habits of focus and objective, and teaches values of participation, equality, and deliberation. We all know that juries are essential for courts, however we don’t know that jury service is essential for democracy. This ebook evokes us to re-examine the jury expertise and act on the constitutional ideas that information our nation earlier than, throughout, and after jury service.