Re: Jury
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <antti-juhani@kaijanaho.fi> writes:
> (As an aside, the other thing I find really abhorrent about the US-style
> juries is that they are not allowed (nor required) to write up a
> reasoning. If I have understood it correctly, there is a legal doctrine
> in the US that entitles the jury to rule contrary to law. This is
> ... bizarre, but also not relevant to Debian. Sorry about the rant:)
There are several origins of this doctrine. Steve describes one of them.
Another is that jury nullification has a history of being used by juries
to refuse to enforce unjust laws. The government is understandably not
particularly fond of this practice, but it has a long tradition in English
common law and it is an occasionally useful balance of power and was
supported by many of the people involved in putting together the US's
system of government.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification for more details than
you may want to know.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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