Document Type
Article
Comments
The Criminal Jury in Our Time, 3 VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL POLICY & THE LAW 133 (1995)
Abstract
In this essay, I consider the present discomfort with the jury in the context of our larger legal discourse. There is much about the jury (civil as well as criminal, though I am here concerned only with the latter) that does not fit comfortably into our modem constitutional and political culture. Many preeminent constitutional values of the founding period-private liberty, federalism, and local control-were well served by a requirement of jury verdicts in criminal trials. Over the past two hundred years, these values have been challenged, if not eclipsed, by competing values. Some essential characteristics of the jury--or, at least, characteristics that until recently we have believed essential to the jury-are difficult to reconcile with certain ofthe social and political values that characterize the latter halfofthe twentieth century.
Date of Authorship for this Version
1995
Recommended Citation
Stith, Kate, "The Criminal Jury in Our Time" (1995). Faculty Scholarship Series. 1275.
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1275