For more than six hundred years-that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their light, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law.

Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a "palladium of liberty"-a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government-they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.

But for their right to judge the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters Of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.

That the rights and duties of jurors must necessarily be such as are here claimed for them, will be evident when it is considered what the trial by jury is, and what is its object.

"The trial by jury," then, is a "trial by the country"-that is, by the people- as distinguished from a trial by the government.

It was anciently called "trial per pais"-that is, "trial by the country." And now, in every criminal trial, the jury are told that the accused "has, for trial, put himself upon the country; which country you (the jury) are."

The object of this trial "by the country," or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or "the country," judge and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government's judging of and determining its own powers over the people.

If the government may decide who may, and who may not, be jurors, it will of course select only its partisans, and those friendly to its measures. It may not only prescribe who may, and who may not, be eligible to be drawn as jurors; but is may also question each person drawn as a juror, as to his sentiments in regard to the particular law involved in each trial, before suffering him to be sworn on the panel; and exclude him if he be found unfavorable to the maintenance of such a law.

So, also, if the government may dictate to the jury what laws they are to enforce, it is no longer a "trial by the country," but a trial by the government; because the jury then try the accused, not by any standard of their own-not by their own judgments of their rightful liberties-but by a standard dictated to them by the government. And the standard, thus dictated by the government, becomes the measure of the people's liberties. If the government dictate the standard of trial, it of course dictates the results of the trial. And such a trial is no trial by the country, but only a trial by the government; and in it the government determines what are its own powers over the people, instead of the people's determining what are their own liberties against the government. In short, if the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.

The jury are also to judge whether the laws are rightly expounded to them by the court. Unless they judge on this point, they do nothing to protect their liberties against the oppressions that are capable of being practiced under cover of a corrupt exposition of the laws. If the judiciary can authoritatively dictate to a jury any exposition of the law, they can dictate to them the law itself, and such laws as they please; because laws are, in practice, one thing or another, according as they are expounded.

They must also judge whether there really be any such law, (be it good or bad,) as the accused is charged with having transgressed. Unless they judge on this point, the people are liable to have their liberties taken from them by brute force, without any law at all.

The jury must also judge of the laws of evidence. If the government can dictate to the jury the laws of evidence, it can not only shut out any evidence it pleases, tending to vindicate the accused, but it can require that any evidence whatever, that it pleases to offer, be held as conclusive proof of any offense whatever which the government chooses to allege.

It is manifest, therefore, that the jury must judge of and try the whole case, and every part and parcel of the case, free of any dictation or authority on the part of the government. They must judge of the existence of the law; of the true exposition of the law; of the justice of the law; and of the admissibility of and weight of all the evidence offered; otherwise the government will have everything its own way; the jury will be mere puppets in the hands of the government; and the trial will be, in reality, a trial by the government, and not a "trial by the country." By such trials the government will determine its own powers over the people, instead of the people's determining their own liberties against the government; and it will be an entire delusion to talk, as for centuries we have done, of the trial by the jury, as a "palladium of liberty," or as any protection to the people against the oppression and tyranny of the government.

The question, then, between trial by jury, as thus described, and trial by the government, is simply a question between liberty and despotism. The authority to judge what are the powers of the government, and what are the liberties of the people, must necessarily be vested in one or the other of the parties themselves-the government, or the people; because there is no third party to whom it can be entrusted. If the authority be vested in the government, the government is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with. If, on the other hand, that authority be vested in the people, then the people have all liberties, (as against the government,) except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) choose to disclaim; and the government can exercise no power except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) consent that it may exercise.

The example is sufficient to show that the very pith of the trial by jury, as a safeguard to liberty, consists in the jurors being taken indiscriminately from the whole people, and in their- right to hold invalid all laws which they think unjust.

Section 2

The force and justice of the preceding argument cannot be evaded by saying that the government is chosen by the people; that, in theory, it represents the people; that it is designed to do the will of the people; that its members are all sworn to observe the fundamental or constitutional law instituted by the people; that its acts are therefore entitled to be considered the acts of the people; and that to allow a jury, representing the people, to invalidate the acts of government, would therefore be arraying the people against themselves.

There are two answers to such an argument.

One answer is, that, in a representative government, there is no absurdity or contradiction, nor any arraying of the people against themselves, in requiring that the statutes or enactments of the government shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws.

Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive, jury, and judges; and have made it necessary that each enactment shall pass the ordeal of all these separate tribunals, before its authority can be established by the punishment of those who choose to transgress it. And there is no more absurdity or inconsistency in making a jury one of these several tribunals, than there is in making the representatives, or ~t ~e senate, or the executive, or the judges, one of them. There is no more absurdity in giving a jury the veto upon the laws, than there is in giving a veto to each of these other tribunals. The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the judges.

But another answer to the argument that the people are arrayed against themselves, when a jury hold an enactment of the government invalid, is, that the government, and all the departments of government, are merely the servants and agents of the people; not interested with arbitrary or absolute authority to bind the people, but required to submit all their enactments to the judgment of a tribunal more fairly representing the whole people, before they carry them into execution, by punishing any individual for transgressing them. If the government were not thus required to submit their enactments to the judgment of "the country," before executing them upon individuals-if, in other words, the people had reserved to themselves no veto upon the acts of government, the government, instead of being a mere servant and agent of the people, would be an absolute despot over the people. It would have all power in its own hands; because the power to punish carries all other powers with it. A power that can, of itself, and by its own authority, punish disobedience, can compel obedience and submission, and is above all responsibility for the character of its laws. In short, it is a despotism.

And it is of no consequence to inquire how a government came by this power to punish, whether by prescription, by inheritance, by usurpation, or by delegation of the people? If it have now but got it, the government is absolute.

It is plain, therefore, that if the people have invested the government with power to make laws that absolutely bind the people, and to punish the people for transgressing those laws, the people have surrendered their liberties unreservedly into the hands of the government.

It is of no avail to say, in answer to this view of the case, that in surrendering their liberties into the hands of government, the people took an oath from the government, that it would exercise its power within certain constitutional limits; for when did oaths ever restrain a government that was otherwise unrestrained? Or when did a government fail to determine that all its acts were within the constitutional and authorized limits of its power, if it were permitted to determine that question for itself.

Neither is it of any avail to say, that, if the government abuse its power, and enact unjust and oppressive laws, the government may be changed by the influence of discussion, and the exercise of the right of suffrage (voting). Discussion can do nothing to prevent the enactment, or procure the repeal, of unjust laws, unless it be understood that the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Besides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactments of new ones that are equally so. The second body of legislators are liable and likely to be just as tyrannical as the first. If it be said that the second body may be chosen for their integrity, the answer is, that the first were chosen for that very reason, and yet proved tyrants. The second will be exposed to the same temptations as the first, and will be just as likely to prove tyrannical. Who ever heard that succeeding legislatures were, on the whole, more honest than those that preceded them? What is there in the nature of men or things to make them so? If it ~1. be said that the first body were chosen from motives of injustice, that fact proves that there is a portion of society who desire to establish injustice; and if they were powerful or artful enough to procure the election of their instruments to compose the first legislature, they will be likely to be powerful or artful enough to procure the election of the same or similar instruments to compose the second. The right of suffrage, therefore, and even a change of legislators, guarantees no change of legislation-certainly no change for the better. Even if a change for the better actually comes, it comes too late, because it comes only after more or less injustice has been irreparably done.

But, at best, the right of suffrage can be exercised only periodically; and between the periods the legislators are wholly irresponsible. No despot was ever more entirely irresponsible than are republican legislators during the period for which they are chosen. They can never be removed from their office, nor called to account while in their office, nor punished after they leave office, be their tyranny what it may. Moreover, the judicial and executive departments of the government are equally irresponsible to the people, and are only responsible, (by impeachment, and dependence for their salaries), to these irresponsible legislators. This dependence of the judiciary and executive upon the legislature is a guaranty that they will always sanction and execute its laws, whether just or unjust. Thus the legislators hold the whole power of the government in their hands, and are at the same time utterly irresponsible for the manner in which they use it.

If, now, this government, (the three branches thus really united in one), can determine the validity of, and enforce, its own laws, it is, for the time being, entirely absolute, and wholly irresponsible to the people.

But this is not all. These legislators, and this government, so irresponsible while in power, can perpetuate their power at pleasure, if they can determine what legislation is authoritative upon the people, and can enforce obedience to it; for they can not only declare their power perpetual, but they can enforce submission to all legislation that is necessary to secure its perpetuity. They can, for example, prohibit all discussion of the rightfulness of their authority; forbid the use of suffrage; prevent the election of any successors; disarm, plunder, imprison, and even kill all who refuse submission. If, therefore, the government (all departments united) be absolute for a day-that is, if it can, for a day, enforce obedience to its own laws-it can, in that day, secure its power for all time-like the queen, who wished to reign but for a day, but in that day caused the king, her husband, to be slain, and usurped his throne.

Nor will it avail to say that such acts would be unconstitutional, and that unconstitutional acts may be lawfully resisted; for everything a government pleases to do will, of course, be determined to be constitutional, if the government itself be permitted to determine the question of the constitutionality of its own acts. Those who are capable of tyranny, are capable of perjury to sustain it.

The conclusion, therefore, is, that any government, that can, for a day, enforce its own laws, without appealing to the people, (or to a tribunal fairly representing the people,) for their consent, is, in theory, an absolute government, irresponsible to the people, and can perpetuate its power at pleasure.

The trial by jury is based upon a recognition of this principle, and therefore forbids the government to execute any of its laws, by punishing violators, in any case whatever, without first getting the consent of "the country," or the people, through a jury. In this way, the people at all times, hold their liberties in their own hands, and never surrender them, even for a moment, into the hands of government.

The trial by jury, then, gives to any and every individual the liberty, at any time, to disregard or resist any law whatever of the government, if he be willing to submit to the decision of a jury, the questions, whether the law be intrinsically just and obligatory? and whether his conduct, in disregarding or resisting it, were right in itself? And any law, which does not, in such trial, obtain the unanimous sanction of twelve men, taken at random from the people, and judging according to the standard of justice in their own minds, free from all dictation and authority of the government, may be transgressed and resisted with impunity, by whomsoever pleases to transgress or resist it.*

And if there be so much as a reasonable doubt of the justice of the laws, the benefit of that doubt must be given to the defendant, and not to the government. So that the government must keep its laws clearly within the limits of justice, if it would ask a jury to enforce them.

The trial by jury authorizes all this, or it is a sham and a hoax, utterly worthless for protecting the people against oppression. If it do not authorize an individual to resist the first and least act of injustice or tyranny, on the part of the government, it does not authorize him to resist the last and the greatest. If it do not authorize individuals to nip tyranny in the bud, it does not authorize them to cut it down when its branches are filled with the ripe fruits of plunder and oppression.

Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all legal defence whatsoever against oppression. The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government. The government itself never acknowledges this right. And the right is practically established only when and because the government no longer exists to call it in question. The right, therefore, can be exercised with immunity, only when it is exercised victoriously. All unsuccessful attempts at revolution, however justifiable in themselves, are punished as treason, if the government be permitted to judge of the treason. The government itself never admits the injustice of its laws, as a legal defence for those who have attempted a revolution, and failed. The right of revolution, therefore, is a right of no practical value, except for those who are stronger than the government. So long, therefore, as the oppressions of a government are kept within such limits as simply not to exasperate against it a power greater than its own, the right of revolution cannot be appealed to, and is therefore inapplicable to the case. This affords a wide field for tyranny; and if a jury cannot here intervene, the oppressed are utterly defenseless.

It is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resistance to the execution of the injustice; because the injustice will certainly be executed, unless it be forcibly resisted. And if it be but suffered to be executed, it must then be borne; for the government never makes compensation for its own wrongs.

Since, then, this forcible resistance to the injustice of the government is the only possible means of preserving liberty, it is indispensable to all legal liberty that this resistance should be legalized. It is perfectly self-evident that where there is no legal right to resist the oppression of the government, there can be no legal liberty. And here it is all-important to notice, that, practically speaking, there can be no legal right to resist the oppressions of the government, unless there be some legal tribunal, other than the government, and wholly independent of, and above, the government, to judge between the government and those who resist its oppressions; in other words, to judge what laws of the government are to be obeyed, and what may be resisted and held for naught. The only tribunal known to our laws, for this purpose, is a jury. If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, and resist its oppressions, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves. Like many other slaves they may have sufficient courage and strength to keep their masters somewhat in check; but they are nevertheless known to the law only as slaves.

That this right of resistance was recognized as a common law right, when the ancient and genuine trial by jury was in force, is not only proved by the nature of the trial itself, but is acknowledged by history.*

* - Hallam says "The relation established between a lord and his vassal by the feudal tenure, far from containing principles of any servile and implicit obedience, permitted the compact to be dissolved in case of its violation by either party. This extended as much to the sovereign as to inferior lords. + + If a vassal was aggrieved, and if justice was denied him, he sent a defiance, that is, a renunciation of fealty to the king, and was entitled to enforce redress at the point of his sword. It then became a contest of strength as between two independent potentates, and was, terminated by treaty, advantageous or otherwise, according to the fortune of war. + + There remained the original principle, that allegiance depended conditionally upon good treatment, and that an appeal might be lawfully made to arms against an oppressive government. Nor was this, we may be sure, left for extreme necessity, or thought to require a long-enduring forbearance. In modern times, a king, compelled by his subjects' sword is to abandon any pretension, would be supposed to have ceased to reign; and the express recognition of such a right is that of insurrection has been justly deemed inconsistent with the majority of law. But ruder ages had ruder sentiments. Force was necessary to repel force; and men accustomed to see the king's authority defied by a private riot, were not much shocked when it was resisted in defence of public freedom."
-- 3 Middle Ages, 240-3

This right of resistance is recognized by the constitution of the United States, as a strictly legal and constitutional right. It is so recognized, first by the provision that "the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury"-that is, by the country-and not by the government; secondly, by the provision that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This constitutional security for "the right to keep and bear arms," implies the right to use them-as mush as a constitutional security for the right to buy and keep food would have implied the right to eat it. The constitution, therefore, takes it for granted that the people will judge of the conduct of the government, and that, as they have the right, they will also have the sense, to use arms, whenever the necessity of the case justifies it. And it is a sufficient and legal defence for a person accused of using arms against the government, if he can show, to the satisfaction of a jury, or even any one of a jury, that the law he resisted was an unjust one.

In the American State constitutions also, this right of resistance to the oppressions of the government is recognized, in various ways, as a natural, legal, and constitutional right. In the first place, it is so recognized by provisions establishing the trial by jury; thus requiring that accused persons shall be tried by "the country," instead of the government. In the second place, it is recognized by many of them, as, for example, those of Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, by provisions, in their bills of rights, declaring that men have a natural, inherent, and inalienable right of "defending their lives and liberties." This, of course, means that they have a right to defend them against any injustice on the pail of government, and not merely on the part of private individuals; because the object of all bills of rights is to assert the rights of individuals and the people, as against the government, and not as against private persons. It would be a matter of ridiculous supererogation to assert, in a constitution of government, the natural right of men to defend their lives and liberties against private trespassers.

Many of these bills of rights also assert the natural right of all men to protect their property-that is, to protect it against the government. It would be unnecessary and silly indeed to assert, in a constitution of government, the natural right of individuals to protect their property against thieves and robbers.

The constitutions of New Hampshire and Tennessee also declare that "The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."

The legal effect of these constitutional recognitions of the right of individuals to defend their property, liberties, and lives, against the government, is to legalize resistance to all injustice and oppression, of every name and nature whatsoever, on the part of the government.

But for this right of resistance, on the part of the people, all governments would become tyrannical to a degree of which few people are aware. Constitutions are utterly worthless to restrain the tyranny of governments, unless it be understood that the people will, by force, compel the government to keep within the constitutional limits. Practically speaking, no government knows any limits to its power, except the endurance of the people. But that the people are stronger than the government, and will resist in extreme cases, our governments would be little or nothing else than organized systems of plunder and oppression. All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance. If the people are then as good as their word, they may keep the government within the bounds they have set for it; otherwise it will disregard them-as is proved by the example of all our American governments, in which the constitutions have all become obsolete, at the moment of their adoption, for nearly or quite all purposes except the appointment of officers, who at once become practically absolute, except so far as they are restrained by the fear of popular resistance.

The bounds set to the power of the government, by the trial by jury, as will hereafter be shown, are these-that the government shall never touch the property, person, or natural or civil rights of an individual, against his consent, (except for the purpose of bringing them before a jury for trial,) unless in pursuance and execution of a judgment, or decree, rendered by a jury in each individual case, upon such evidence, and such law, as are satisfactory to their own understandings and consciences, irrespective of all legislation of the government.

The trial by jury must, if possible, be construed to be such that a man can rightfully sit in a jury, and unite with his fellows in giving judgment. But no man can rightfully do this, unless he hold in his own hand alone a veto upon any judgment or sentence whatever to be rendered by the jury against a defendant, which veto he must be permitted to use according to his own discretion and conscience, and not bound to use according to the dictation of either legislatures or judges. The prevalent idea, that a juror may, at the mere dictation of a legislature or a judge, and without the concurrence of his own conscience or understanding, declare a man "guilty," and thus in effect license the government to punish him; and that the legislature or the judge, and not himself, has in that case all the moral responsibility for the correctness of the principles on which the judgment was rendered, is one of the many gross impostures by which it could hardly have been supposed that any sane man could ever have been deluded, but which governments have nevertheless succeeded in inducing the people at large to receive and act upon.

As a moral proposition, it is perfectly self-evident that, unless juries have all the legal rights that have been claimed for them in the preceding chapters,--that is, the rights of judging what the law is, whether the law be a just one, what evidence is admissible, what weight the evidence is entitled to, whether an act were done with a criminal intent, and the right also to limit the sentence, free from all dictation from any quarter,--they have no moral right to sit in the trial at all, and cannot do so without making themselves accomplices in any injustice that they may have reason to believe may result from their verdict. It is absurd to say that they have no moral responsibility for the use that may be made of their verdict by the government, when they have reason to suppose it will be used for purposes of injustice.

It is, for instance, manifestly absurd to say that jurors have no moral responsibility for the enforcement of an unjust law, when they consent to render a verdict of guilty for the transgression of it; which verdict they know, or have good reason to believe, will be used by the government as a justification for inflicting a penalty.

It is absurd, also, to say that jurors have no moral responsibility for a punishment inflicted upon a man against law, when, at the dictation of a judge as to what the law is, they have consented to render a verdict against their own opinions of the law.

It is absurd, too, to say that jurors have no moral responsibility for the conviction and punishment of an innocent man, when they consent to render a verdict against him on the strength of evidence, or laws of evidence, dictated to them by the court, if any new evidence or laws of evidence have been excluded, which they (the jurors) think ought to have been admitted in his defence.

It is absurd to say that jurors have no moral responsibility for rendering a verdict of "guilty" against a man, for an act which he did not know to be a crime, and in the commission of which, therefore he could have had no criminal intent, in obedience to the instructions of courts that "ignorance of the law (that is, of crime) excuses no one."

It is absurd, also, to say that jurors have no moral responsibility for any cruel and unusual sentence that maybe inflicted even upon a guilty man, when they consent to render a verdict which they have reason to believe will be used by the government as a justification for the infliction of such sentence.

The consequence is, that jurors must have the whole case in their hands, and judge of law, evidence, and sentence, or they incur the moral responsibility of accomplices in any injustice which they have reason to believe will be done by the government on the authority of their verdict.

The same principles apply to civil cases as criminal. If a jury consent, at the dictation of the court, as to either law or evidence, to render a verdict, on the strength of which they have reason to believe that a man's property will be taken from him and given to another, against their own notions of justice, they make themselves morally responsible for the wrong.

Every man, therefore, ought to refuse to sit in a jury, and to take the oath of a juror, unless the form of the oath be such as to allow him to use his own judgment, on every part of the case, free of all dictation whatsoever, and to hold in his own hand a veto upon any verdict that can be rendered against a defendant, and any sentence that can be inflicted upon him, even if he be guilty.

Of course, no man can rightfully take an oath as a juror, to try a case "according to law," (if by law be meant anything other than his own ideas of justice,) nor "according to the law and the evidence, as they shall be given to him." Nor can he rightfully take an oath even to try a case "according to the evidence," because in all cases he may have good reason to believe that a party has been unable to produce all the evidence legitimately entitled to be received. The only oath which it would seem that a man can rightfully take as a juror, in either a civil or criminal case, is, that he "will try the case according to his conscience." Of course, the form may admit of variation, but this should be the substance. Such, we have seen, were the ancient common law oaths.

In his book, No Treason Spooner maintained that the U.S. Constitution literally bound no one (in a legal sense) to perform, including the very men who drafted and signed it! Yet, in 1991, we are beset with thousands upon thousands of "laws"-local, state & Federal-which, undoubtedly, only a few have read, much less comprehended, including many judges (who are supposedly intended to uphold them). This being the case, justice is often ignored or denied in today's tribunals and courts. As Patrick Henry exclaimed, "What right have they (the framers of the U.S. Constitution) to say 'We, The People'?!" binding each succeeding generation with pains of punishment for violation of statutes where there was no universal popular consent. What "check" do we have on bad legislation?

Enter the Jury

Historically, under the Common Law (originating in the Holy Bible), juries have been bodies of conscience, confirming either the correctness or corruption of Man's laws. As Spooner noted:

But it is in the administration of justice, or of law, that the freedom or subjection of a people is tested. If this administration be in Accordance with the arbitrary will of the legislator-that is, if his will, as it appears in his statutes, be the highest rule of decision known to judicial tribunals,--the government is a despotism, and the people are slaves. If, on the other band, the rule of decision be those principles of natural equity and justice, which constitute, or at least are embodied in, the general conscience of mankind, the people are free in just so far as that conscience is enlightened.

Today the mass of society appears not only unenlightened, but incapable of judging right from wrong, or at least this is what opponents of jury powers notification will tell you (their vested interests usually lie in upholding the legislative elite). Spooner rightly stated that one motive for legitimate government was "protection of the weak against the strong," and America's jural society provided this avenue for the weak and, yes, the unenlightened. In the very first jury trial before the U.S. supreme Court in 1794 ("supreme" is not capitalized in the U.S. Constitution, though the term "Behavior" is), the judges said, "it is presumed, that the juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that the courts are the best judges of law. But still, both objects are within your power of decision. You have a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. " (Georgia vs. Brailsford, et al, 3 Dall. 1, emphasis ours)

Indeed, these popular powers existed long before, and are independent of, the U.S. Constitution:

Under constitutional scheme, grand jury is not and should notbe captive to any of the three branches of government; the grandjury, is a pre-constitutional institution given constitutional stature by the Fifth Amendment but not relegated by the Constitution to a position within any of the three branches of government, as the federal grand jury is a constitutional fixture in its own right (U.S.C.A. Const. Amend. 5; U.S. vs. Chanen, 549 F.2d 1306, certiorari denied 98 s. Ct. 72, 434 U.S. 825, 54 L.Ed.2d 83) ... (There is a difference between a common law grand jury, and a "federal grand jury," which applies only to "federal citizens"-residents of Washington, D.C. and its enclaves).

Grand jury is (an) investigative body acting independently of either prosecutor or judge whose mission is to bring to trial those who may be guilty and clear the innocent. (Marston's Inc. vs. Strand, 560 P.2d 778, 114 Ariz. 260).

It must be clearly understood that, in America, court decisions (though they be called case law) are NOT law at all, but merely decisions "of a court" applicable only to the case at hand. They may be good decisions, and they may be bad, but in a legitimate government, they are unanimous concensus of a properly empanelled jury which has acted independently of a judge or prosecutor, according to the dictates of conscience If the consciences of any particular jurors are seared, keep in mind that the same applies to government employees, whose job it is to uphold the liberties of the common man, not his own interests.

The Constitutions of Maryland (Art. XXIII, entire), Indiana (Art. I, sec. 19), Oregon (Art. I, sec. 16), and Georgia (Art. I sec. 1, para. 11, subsec. A), currently have provisions guaranteeing the right of jurors to "judge the law"; that is, to nullify the law.

Although these provisions have not been strong enough to withstand decades of hostile judicial interpretation, and have relatively little current impact, they do remain "on the books".

Twenty­three states currently include jury nullification provisions in their Constitutions under their sections on freedom of speech, specifically with respect to libel and sedition cases:

Alabama (Art.I, Sec. 12); Colorado (Art.II, sec. 10); Connecticut (Art. First, sec. 7); Delaware (Art. I, sec. 5); Georgia (Art. I, sec. II, Para. 1); Kentucky (Bill of Rights, sec. 9); Louisiana (Art. XIV, sec. 9); Maine (Art. I, sec. 4); Mississippi (Art. 3, sec. 13); Missouri (Art. 1, sec. 8); Montana (Art. II, sec. 7); New Jersey (Art. I, sec. 6); New York (Art. I, sec. 8); North Dakota (Art. I, sec. 9); Oregon (Art. I, sec. 16); Pennsylvania (Art. I, sec. 7); South Carolina (Art. II, sec. 21); South Dakota (Art. VI, sec. 5); Tennessee (Art. I, sec. 19); Texas (Art. I, sec. 8); Utah (Art. I, sec. 15); Wisconsin (Art. I, sec. 3); Wyoming (Art. I, sec. 20).

Source: Alan W. Scheflin, "Jury Nullification: the Right to Say No", Southern California Law Review, 45, p. 204 (1972). [List has been updated to 1993.]

Educating jurors and prospective jurors is the only way to make certain that justice is done. Fully informed juries is appealing to anyone with a concern for the importance of the Constitution, to anyone who believes that justice should be tempered with mercy, to anyone worried about the increasing interference of the various arms of Big Government, to anyone who thinks that state-mandated sentences for varous crimes fail to take into consideration the human element and the differences of fact in individual cases.

It is not only (the juror's) right but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
John Adams, 1771

We take a lots of rights and privleges for granted in this country, among them the right to a trial by jury, though this right exists only in Britain and its former colonies. Juries of one's peers are the final check on a government's power when it has an interest in convicting. Trial by jury is under attack in America in several ways: in what they are allowed to judge, what they're allowed to hear and how they're allowed to rule. Trial by jury replaced trials of water and fire as a means of establishing guilt or innocence. It is a basic right in English-speaking lands.

"Unsatisfactory verdicts" will be a thing of the past when jurors are fully informed. In 1670 an "unsatisfactory verdict" was delivered by the jurors acquittal of William Penn in that the king's law against preaching quaker doctrine was nullified. When William Penn beat the rap for his sermon justice prevailed as jurors said "He may be guilty, but he's guilty of breaking a lousy law--and we're not going to convict him." Three Hundred and Twenty Years later, jurors cry after delivering their verdict because they followed the judge's instructions but violated their own good sense and conscience. The judge instructed them to follow the law as he saw fit to give it to them, like-it-or-not. Today's "unsatisfactory verdicts" are delivered in contravention of everyone's natural rights, common law rights, and constitutional rights. ...(It is the juries) primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the exeuction of, such laws.
Lysander Spooner, 1852

John Adams, who became the second U.S. President, in 1771 said of the juror: "It is not only his right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." Quoted in Yale Law Journal 74 (1964):173.

Alexander Hamilton (1804): Jurors should acquit even against the judge's instruction "...if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong." Quoted in Joseph Sax, Yale Law Review 57 (June 1968): 481­494.

John Jay, first Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, in Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794:4 said: "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."

Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1804: "The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Thomas Paine, 1789: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Theophilus Parsons, "...a leading supporter of the Constitution of the United States in the convention of 1788 by which Massachusetts ratified the Constitution, appointed by President Adams in 1801 Attorney General of the United States, but declining that office, and becoming Chief Justice of Massachusetts in 1806" said:

"The people themselves have it in their power effectually to resist usurpation, without being driven to an appeal to arms. An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance. Let him be considered as a criminal by the general government, yet only his fellow citizens can convict him; they are his jury, and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of Congress can hurt him; and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law he resisted was an act of usurpation." 2 Elliot's Debates, 94; 2 Bancroft's History of the Constitution, p. 267. Quoted in Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51 (1895), Dissenting Opinion: Gray, Shiras, JJ., 144.

"If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states then that juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty, ­­ For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time." 2 Elliot's Debates, 94, Bancroft, History of the Constitution, 267, 1788.

"Unless the jury can exercise its community conscience role, our judicial system will have become so inflexible that the effect may well be a progressive radicalization of protest into channels that will threaten the very continuance of the system itself. To put it another way, the jury is...the safety valve that must exist if this society is to be able to accommodate its own internal stresses and strains...[I]f the community is to sit in the jury box, its decision cannot be legally limited to a conscience­less application of fact to law." William Kunstler, quoted in Franklin M. Nugent, Jury Power: Secret Weapon Against Bad Law, revised from Youth Connection, 1988.

"Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told it must take (or accept) as the law that which has been given to them, or that they must bring in a certain verdict, or that they can decide only the facts of the case." Lord Denman, C.J. O'Connel v. R. (1884).

"For more than six hundred years­­that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215, there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws."
Lysander Spooner, An Essay on the Trial by Jury, 1852, p. 11.

"In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction." Article XXIII, Constitution of Maryland

"Because of this constitutional mandate, this instruction is given to criminal jurors in Maryland:

'Members of the Jury, this is a criminal case and under the Constitution and the laws of the State of Maryland in a criminal case the jury are the judges of the law as well as of the facts in the case. So that whatever I tell you about the law while it is intended to be helpful to you in reaching a just and proper verdict in the case, it is not binding upon you as members of the jury and you may accept or reject it. And you may apply the law as you apprehend it to be in the case. '" Alan Scheflin and Jon Van Dyke, Jury Nullification: The Contours of a Controversy, Law and Contemporary Problems, 43, 83. (1980)

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision." United States v. Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006.

The jury has an "unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law. U.S. v. Dougherty, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 1972, 473 F.2d at 1130 and 1132. (Nevertheless, the majority opinion held that jurors need not be told this. Dissenting Chief Judge Bazelon thought that they ought to be so told.)

"The arguments for opposing the nullification instruction are, in our view, deficient because they fail to weigh the political advantages gained by not lying to the jury...What impact will this deception have on jurors who felt coerced into their verdict by the judge's instructions and who learn, after trail, that they could have voted their consciences and acquitted? Such a juror is less apt to respect the legal system." Alan Scheflin and Jon Van Dyke, "Jury Nullification: the Contours of a Controversy," Law and Contemporary Problems, 43, No.4,105­ 106.

"In a representative government...there is no absurdity or contradiction, nor any arraying of the people against themselves, in requiring that the statutes or enactments of the government shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws. Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive...jury, and judges; and have made it necessary that each enactment shall pass the ordeal of all these separate tribunals, before its authority can be established by the punishment of those who choose to transgress it...there is no more absurdity in giving a jury a veto upon the laws than there is in giving a veto to each of these other tribunals."
Lysander Spooner, An Essay on the Trial by Jury, 1852.

"In all criminal cases whatsoever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts." Article 1, section 19 of the Indiana Constitution. Upheld, Holliday v. State 257 N.E. 579 (1970).

"It is useful to distinguish between the jury's right to decide questions of law and its power to do so. The jury's power to decide the law in returning a general verdict is indisputable. The debate of the nineteenth century revolved around the question of whether the jury had a legal and moral right to decide questions of law." Note (anon.), The Changing Role of the Jury in the Nineteenth Century, Yale Law Journal, 74,170 (1964).

"...[T]he right of the jury to decide questions of law was widely recognized in the colonies. In 1771, John Adams stated unequivocally that a juror should ignore a judge's instruction on the law if it violates fundamental principles:

'It is not only...[the juror's] right, but his duty, in that case, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.'

There is much evidence of the general acceptance of this principle in the period immediately after the Constitution was adopted." Note (anon.), The Changing Role of the Jury in the Nineteenth Century, Yale Law Journal 74, 173 (1964).

"During the first third of the nineteenth century,...judges frequently charged juries that they were the judges of law as well as the fact and were not bound by the judge's instructions. A charge that the jury had the right to consider the law had a corollary at the level of trial procedure: counsel had the right to argue the law­­its interpretation and its validity­­to the jury." Note (anon.), The Changing Role of the Jury in the Nineteenth Century, Yale Law Journal 74, 174,(1964).

Alexander Hamilton, acting as defense counsel in a seditious libel case, said: "That in criminal cases, nevertheless, the court are the constitutional advisors of the jury in matter of law; who may compromise their conscience by lightly or rashly disregarding that advice, but may still more compromise their consciences by following it, if exercising their judgments with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong." 7 Hamilton's Works (ed. 1886), 336­373.

New York Supreme Court Justice Kent (1803): "The true criterion of a legal power is its capacity to produce a definitive effect, liable neither to censure nor review. And the verdict of not guilty in a criminal case, is, in every respect, absolutely final. The jury are not liable to punishment, nor the verdict to control. No attaint lies, nor can a new trial be awarded. The exercise of this power in the jury has been sanctioned, and upheld in constant activity, from the earliest ages." 3 Johns Cas., 366­368. Quoted in Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S.51, 148­149. (1894) (Gray, Shiras, JJ, dissenting).

"Within six years after the Constitution was established, the right of the jury, upon the general issue, to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy, was unhesitatingly and unqualifiedly affirmed by this court, in the first of the very few trials by jury ever had at its bar, under the original jurisdiction conferred upon it by the Constitution.

"The report shows that, in a case in which there was no controversy about the facts, the court, while stating to the jury its unanimous opinion upon the law of the case, and reminding them of 'the good old rule, that on questions of fact it is the province of the jury, on questions of law it is the province of the court to decide,' expressly informed them that 'by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction', the jury 'have nevertheless a right to take upon themselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.'" Supreme Court, Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 154­155 (1894), from the dissent by Gray and Shiras.

"It is universally conceded that a verdict of acquittal, although rendered against the instructions of the judge, is final, and cannot be set aside; and consequently that the jury have the legal power to decide for themselves the law involved in the general issue of guilty or not guilty." From the dissent by Gray and Shiras, Supreme Court, Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 172 (1894).

"...[I]t is a matter of common observation, that judges and lawyers, even the most upright, able and learned, are sometimes too much influenced by technical rules; and that those judges who are...occupied in the administration of criminal justice are apt, not only to grow severe in their sentences, but to decide questions of law too unfavorably to the accused.

"The jury having the undoubted and uncontrollable power to determine for themselves the law as well as the fact by a general verdict of acquittal, a denial by the court of their right to exercise this power will be apt to excite in them a spirit of jealousy and contradiction..."

"...[A] person accused of crime has a twofold protection, in the court and the jury, against being unlawfully convicted. If the evidence appears to the court to be insufficient in law to warrant a conviction, the court may direct an acquittal...But the court can never order the jury to convict; for no one can be found guilty, but by the judgment of his peers." From the dissent by Gray and Shiras, Supreme Court, Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 174 (1894).

"But, as the experience of history shows, it cannot be assumed that judges will always be just and impartial, and free from the inclination, to which even the most upright and learned magistrates have been known to yield­­from the most patriotic motives, and with the most honest intent to promote symmetry and accuracy in the law­­of amplifying their own jurisdiction and powers at the expense of those entrusted by the Constitution to other bodies. And there is surely no reason why the chief security of the liberty of the citizen, the judgment of his peers, should be held less sacred in a republic than in a monarchy." From the dissent by Gray and Shiras, Supreme Court, Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 176 (1894).

"The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and facts." Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Horning v. District of Columbia, 138 (1920).

"If juries were restricted to finding facts, cases with no disputed factual issues would be withheld from the jury. But such cases are presented to the jury. By its general verdict of innocence, the jury may free a person without its verdict being subject to challenge. The judge cannot ask jurors to explain their verdict, nor may the judge punish the jurors for it. Although judges now generally tell jurors they must obey the judge's instructions on the law, the jurors may not be compelled to do so. If the jury convicts, however, the defendant is entitled to a broad range of procedural protections to ensure that the jury was fair and honest.

"When a jury acquits a defendant even though he or she clearly appears to be guilty, the acquittal conveys significant information about community attitudes and provides a guideline for future prosecutorial discretion in the enforcement of the laws. Because of the high acquittal rate in prohibition cases during the 1920s and early 1930s, prohibition laws could not be enforced. The repeal of these laws is traceable to the refusal of juries to convict those accused of alcohol traffic." Alan Scheflin and Jon Van Dyke, Jury Nullification: The Contours of a Controversy, Law and Contemporary Problems 43, No.4, 71 (1980).

"Jury acquittals in the colonial, abolitionist, and post­bellum eras of the United States helped advance insurgent aims and hamper government efforts at social control. Widespread jury acquittals or hung juries during the Vietnam War might have had the same effect. But the refusal of judges in trials of antiwar protesters to inform juries of their power to disregard the law helped ensure convictions, which in turn frustrated antiwar goals and protected the government from the many repercussions that acquittals or hung juries would have brought." Steven E. Barkan, Jury Nullification in Political Trials, Social Problems, 31, No. 1, 38, October, 1983.

"...[T]he institution of trial by jury­­especially in criminal cases­­has its hold upon public favor chiefly for two reasons. The individual can forfeit his liberty­­to say nothing of his life­­only at the hands of those who, unlike any official, are in no wise accountable, directly or indirectly, for what they do, and who at once separate and melt anonymously in the community from which they came. Moreover, since if they acquit their verdict is final, no one is likely to suffer of whose conduct they do not morally disapprove; and this introduces a slack into the enforcement of law, tempering its rigor by the mollifying influence of current ethical conventions. A trial by any jury...preserves both these fundamental elements and a trial by a judge preserves neither..." Judge Learned Hand, U.S. ex rel McCann v. Adams, 126 F.2d 774, 775­76 (2nd Circuit, 1942).

"It's easy for the public to ignore an unjust law, if the law operates behind closed doors and out of sight. But when jurors have to use a law to send a man to prison, they are forced to think long and hard about the justice of the law. And when the public reads newspaper accounts of criminal trials and convictions, they too may think about whether the convictions are just. As a result, jurors and spectators alike may bring to public debate more informed interest in improving the criminal law. Any law which makes many people uncomfortable is likely to attract the attention of the legislature. The laws on narcotics and abortion come to mind­­and there must be others. The public adversary trial thus provides an important mechanism for keeping the substantive criminal law in tune with contemporary community values." D.C. Circuit Court Judge D. Bazelon, "The Adversary Process­­Who Needs It?" 12th Annual James Madison Lecture, New York University School of Law (April, 1971), reprinted in 117 Cong. Rec. 5852, 5855 (daily ed. April 29, 1971).