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Juries
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Juries have the Constitutional and common-law right to judge both fact and law. This right is proper, because in this way, the law is ultimately enforced by the people, not by the rulers of the government. Juries are a check on the arbitrary and corrupt power of government. As the 19th-century political philosopher Lysander Spooner wrote, juries provide a trial by the country rather than a trial by the government authorities. If a law is unjust, juries have the legal right to refuse to enforce it.
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Juries date from a time when the King’s Justice required the backing of local consent. They were a bulwark against mob rule, and assisted judges, sheriffs and justices in keeping the general peace. They ran alongside other forms of public duty, such as service as special constables, bailiffs and highway maintainers. Today they are the sole survivor of compulsory public service. That a service as technical as administering justice should be compulsory when, for instance, local government is voluntary is bizarre.
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Juries across the country make decisions every day on the fate of defendants, ideally leading to prison sentences that fit the crime for the guilty and release for the innocent. Yet a new Northwestern University study shows that juries in criminal cases many times are getting it wrong.
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Juries should be treated like all other final exams. Juries missed due to illness or family emergency are made up during finals week. In the case of extended illness/emergency, the student is assigned an “Incomplete” grade for the semester and allowed to complete the jury the following semester. In these circumstances, an instructor may request a confirmation of illness from the Student Health Center. Students who fail to arrive at their scheduled jury time without a legitimate excuse will receive a failing grade for the jury, which may be averaged into the semester grade according to the instructor’s grading procedure, or may prevent the student from passing the course altogether.
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Juries will be scheduled to take place during the final exam period (click here for the 2006-07 academic calendar). They will be noted on the official school calendar, and take place in Rubendall Recital Hall. Three members of the music faculty sit on each jury session, one being the instructor of the course. A jury form will be filled out for each student which must include a letter grade given by the student’s instructor and written comments given by all.
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Three main points come out of this preliminary examination of the political role of grand juries in Quebec and Lower Canada. In the first place, the grand juries were certainly representative institutions, but of the elites, and the urban elites in particular: in no way did they even remotely represent the population at large. Secondly, the notion of the jury as central to a specifically British political identity is debatable; indeed, it was equally important to notions of citizenship advanced by canadien reformers, though with the important difference of an almost exclusive concentration on the grand jury's role in the criminal process. And finally, grand juries did play an important political role, but not at the colonial level. Rather, they were integral part of the political process at a local level, where in the absence of representative institutions they became one of the principal voices of the urban elites, both canadien and British. Whether this continued after the institution of municipal government in 1832, remains to be seen.
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