The Jury’s Role in American Society, or How I Learned to Love the Jury Box

Sep 9

Part 1 Introduction

If you’ve ever received a jury duty summons in the mail, you might have groaned at the inconvenience. But behind that summons stands centuries of history, because the jury box is one of the fundamental pillars of democracy. Despite this, many Americans view jury duty through a negative lens. An oft-repeated adage goes something like “a jury composed of 12 of your peers who couldn’t get out of jury duty.” The underlying sentiment being that jury duty is something one should avoid, a civic duty that only those who cannot figure out an excuse to get out of or those with nothing better to do should take part in. This view fundamentally misunderstands the pivotal role that the jury, and that We the People, play in the administration of justice in the United States. It also misconceives the relationship a United States citizen has with their government.

In spite of these common misunderstandings, few institutions in American governance capture the Founders’ understanding of the “American Experiment” and embody the principles of democratic self-government quite like the jury. Called the "conscience of the community," members of the jury sit in judgment of both facts and, in many cases, the broader moral implications behind a lawsuit or criminal charge. The jury is intended as the voice of the People, weighing in on society’s behalf to effectively “pick a side.” In so doing, the jury decides the issue at hand, cementing its role as a foundational checkbox on governmental overreach.

In the United States, trial by jury embodies the principle that government exists to serve the people—not the other way around. It is a vivid expression of “popular sovereignty.” This concept underlies the American system; that power rests with individuals and the community rather than a king or other supreme ruler. Serving on a jury is far more than just a civic chore. It is a vital duty and an honor that connects ordinary citizens directly to the administration of justice, in addition to serving as a powerful symbol of We the Peoples’ individual freedoms. When jurors are empaneled, they fulfill this necessary role as intended by the Founders. The truth is that jurors do not decide a case on behalf of a monarch or the government. Instead, they decide the issue on behalf of society and the People themselves, who are the only true sovereigns in American governance. The jury thus serves to uphold the notion of individual sovereignty in our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” by ensuring the institutions of power play by the rules before denying someone their Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, or through acting as the voice of impartial reason that decides a civil matter. This is true even in trials for trademark infringement, copyright infringement, or other intellectual property litigation.

This blog post is part of a two-post series exploring how the jury box—both historically and in the modern legal landscape—serves as the cornerstone of American justice. The first post will delve into the origins of the jury, tracing its path from England to colonial America and into its enshrinement in the Constitution, as well as the philosophical underpinnings regarding the importance of the jury box. The subsequent post will examine the jury's place in American criminal and civil cases, reflecting on how the American jury’s role differs from other English common-law traditions and highlighting the foundational assumptions of U.S. governance. In so doing, we at Camuti Law Group APC hope to provide an informative and enlightening perspective on why jury service stands as one of the most critical and profound elements of the American legal system. If you have a civil litigation matter involving your intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, or patents, whether as a plaintiff or whether you were served with a lawsuit as a defendant, the intellectual property and litigation professionals of Camuti Law Group APC can help you seek a resolution to your case.

Origins of the Jury Trial: From Magna Carta to the Common Law

The concept of a trial by jury is deeply rooted in history, reaching back thousands of years before American independence. Even in ancient times, societies experimented with tribunals of citizens. For example, ancient Athens had juries composed of hundreds of citizens deciding cases. The modern American jury trial system, however, traces its lineage to medieval England and the English common law.

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, an early form of the jury was used as an investigative body (similar to the role a grand jury plays today) to tell the English Crown about local affairs observed by the jury members. By the reign of Henry II in the 12th century, these inquest juries were “regularized” to extend royal justice throughout the realm, first in civil disputes and later even in criminal cases. A significant landmark in this legal tradition was the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, in which King John acquiesced that “[no] Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned... except by the lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.” This established the principle that even a king was not entirely above the law and that an accused was fairly entitled to a trial judged by their fellow citizens before being deprived of fundamental rights.

In the centuries that followed, English monarchs and jurists gradually developed the citizens’ jury as a fixture in legal proceedings. Originally, these jurors were not impartial strangers but local witnesses with personal knowledge of the facts underlying an event. By the era of Henry VI in the 1400s the jury had evolved into a body that weighed evidence presented before it in court, rather than one composed of those with a personal understanding of events. By the 17th century, the jury had firmly emerged as a safeguard for the criminally accused against capricious prosecution. English jurist William Blackstone lauded trial by jury in the 1760s as part of a “strong and two-fold barrier . . . between the liberties of the people and the prerogative of the crown.” W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 349-50 (T. Cooley, 4th ed. 1896). Though the other part of that barrier was the grand jury, it was the trial (petit) jury which ensured “the truth of every accusation . . . [must] be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of [the defendant’s] equals and neighbors indifferently chosen and superior to all suspicion.” Id.

In short, English law came to recognize that juries of ordinary people (though at that time, only men) were an essential check on the potential tyranny posed by a monarch’s otherwise ultimate royal power. This common law heritage of viewing jury trials as a bulwark of liberty against arbitrary or capricious authority had profound influence upon the American colonists and Founding Fathers.

Juries During the Foundation of the United States

The colonists in North America considered the English jury trial not just a legal procedure but a fundamental human right. They brought with them the common law notion of the jury as their “birthright and inheritance”, a shield against tyranny and the arbitrary use of power. See Thompson v. Utah, 170 U.S. 343, 349-50 (1898). The institution was considered so important that disputes over the right to a jury trial helped fuel the American Revolution. British authorities sometimes tried colonists in admiralty courts without juries or moved trials to England, especially when local juries refused to convict fellow colonists under unpopular laws.

The Declaration of Independence listed these abuses among the colonies’ grievances, condemning King George III “[f]or depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury” and “[f]or transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses.” Unsurprisingly, Founding Fathers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were passionate about the importance of juries. John Adams boldly proclaimed in 1774 that “[r]epresentative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them, we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds.” This vivid imagery underscores the Founding Fathers’ understanding that without juries and elected legislatures, citizens are utterly at the mercy of those in power. Likewise, Jefferson wrote in 1788, “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.” To this generation of revolutionaries, juries were no optional procedural nicety—they were one of the very mechanisms by which people maintained mastery over their government, rather than the opposite.

It is no surprise, then, that when the U.S. Constitution was written and the Bill of Rights added, jury trials were explicitly protected. While Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed jury trials for federal criminal cases, the Bill of Rights went even further. The Sixth Amendment (ratified as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791) ensures the right to a speedy, public trial “by an impartial jury” in all federal criminal prosecutions. The Seventh Amendment (also part of the Bill of Rights) preserves a citizen’s right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits at common law where the amount at issue exceeds $20, which has never been adjusted for inflation. Every state joining the Union likewise protected jury trial in its own constitution. The Founders’ intent was clear: any justice system without juries was unthinkable if the republic was to be free. England had shown how imperialist judges arbitrarily appointed at whim could become instruments of oppression. To prevent that, the framers of the Constitution ensured that the community’s conscience—the jury—was embedded into the foundational administration of justice at both the state and federal level.

The Jury as an Expression of Popular Sovereignty

Why were the founders so insistent on these juries? The answer lies rooted within these early leaders’ philosophy of government. The United States was founded on the idea that sovereignty resides within the people as a whole; not in any monarch or ruling class. Juries take this principle and put it into action in court. As one federal judge has observed, the Founders wisely used “direct democracy to temper the potential excesses” of judges, ensuring that “[i]n a government ‘of the people,’ the justice of the many cannot be left to the judgment of the few.” Hon. William G. Young, An Open Letter to U.S. District Judges, The Federal Lawyer 31 (July 2003). “[T]he jury achieves symbolically what cannot be achieved practically—the presence of the entire populace at every trial.” P. D’Perna, Juries on Trial 21 (1984).

In other words, handing all decision-making power to select government officials would contradict the American notion of a government that derives its legitimacy from the people. The core emphasis is that in allowing ordinary citizens to decide the fate of their fellows at trial, We the People are active participants in the governance of ourselves. The Founding Fathers and even many of their relative contemporaries would have it no other way. Alexis de Tocqueville, a famed French observer of American society, was struck by this notion of the U.S. jury box’s democratic character. In 1835, Tocqueville wrote that “[t]he jury system ... [is] as direct and as extreme a consequence of the sovereignty of the people as universal suffrage.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 29 (H. Reeve text 1945). He held the process of jury service, alongside voting, as tantamount to ensuring that ultimate power rests with the people. Through juries, “we place the decisions of justice where they rightly belong in a democratic society: in the hands of the governed.” Hon. William G. Young, An Open Letter to U.S. District Judges, The Federal Lawyer 31 (July 2003).

This stands in stark contrast to systems with sovereign rulers or despots, where decisions of justice emanate from the top (by the whims of something like a king, emperor, state, or dictator) and the people are simply subjects who must obey. In the U.S., when a jury convenes, it is a most democratic assembly. The government must present evidence and convince this jury of citizens of the rightness of its case, and that it did every single part correctly by the book. That the state crossed every t and dotted every i before attempting to deprive an individual’s rights. If the government cannot convince the jury members of this, it simply does not prevail. The criminal standard is innocent until proven guilty. In this way, the jury reinforces the notion that the government exists to serve its people, not the other way around.

The presence of a jury also guards against abuses of power by those who wield it. A diverse group of twelve citizens can serve as a check to any one official’s biases or overreach. Supreme Court Justice Byron White famously explained in Duncan v. Louisiana that the Constitutional guarantee of a jury reflects a “reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges.” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968). Americans harbored a “fear of unchecked power”—a fear well-born from historical precedent—and so they insisted on “community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence.” Id.

By enforcing that the consent of ordinary people was required for a conviction or civil decision, the justice system is restrained from becoming a tool of oppression. As was so eloquently expressed in Duncan v. Louisiana, a jury trial provides an “inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.” Id. In short, the jury is the people’s shield, acting to ensure that no citizen is easily railroaded by the state or civil plaintiffs in many actions without first convincing a panel of societal peers that wrongdoing occurred. The presence of the community’s voice in the American trial system is a concrete symbol that We the People are the true arbiters of justice.

Beyond protecting defendants, juries also confer legitimacy on the legal system. Decisions that are reached by representative members of a community tend to be more generally accepted by the public as fair and just. Even when a verdict is controversial, the fact that it was decided by fellow citizens rather than by a faceless government entity or appointed official can make it easier for society to swallow the outcome. In this sense, the jury box connects the law to common sense values representative of its community. This allows jurors to serve as a bridge between the formal rules of court and real-world perceptions of justice, helping ensure that the law does not stray too far from standards those within the community accept—as we are effectively those setting them!

It’s also worth noting that jury service can effectively serve as somewhat of a school for democracy. By serving on juries, citizens learn how to deliberate, weigh evidence, attempt unbiased perception, stand up for their convictions, and respect differing viewpoints, all of which are important skills to an effective self-governed society. Through the experience a juror learns to exercise their rights and understand the responsibilities of citizenship by being a fundamentally important participant in a trial. While not everyone gets this opportunity to serve, those who do often come away with a greater appreciation for the justice system and their role within it. Here in the U.S., then, the jury is not only a tool for reaching verdicts, but also a civic institution that reinforces the democratic character of our government and Constitution.

Conclusion

As we've explored in this post, the jury system in America didn't simply emerge by chance. Far from the case, as shown the jury system was intentionally adopted by the Founders as a profound expression of democratic self-governance, popular sovereignty, and protectionism against capricious use of authority. From its historical roots in English common law to its prominent place as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the process of trial by jury symbolizes the core American principle that power ultimately resides within a state’s people as a whole, not its rulers or elites. Yet, understanding the Founders’ philosophical and historical intent in adopting the jury box only tells part of the story. To fully grasp the enduring significance of the American tradition, we must also examine how juries actually function in the modern justice system and throughout the world—both in criminal cases, where citizens guard liberty against governmental overreach, and in civil cases, where jurors serve as arbiters of fairness in private disputes. In the second part of this series Which Can Be Found Here, we will explore precisely how juries operate today in American courtrooms, what distinguishes our system from those of other nations, and why jury service remains not just a civic duty, but a fundamental privilege in our democracy.

Post by Andrew Cowan