[betty boop]

As I read it, the Constitution puts the power - the determination of guilt/innocence before the law - in the jury, otherwise every trial would be a bench trial.

Exactly! Moreoever, the state may not prosecute a person for a crime unless the grand jury agrees -- the person is shielded from direct action by the state by a panel of his neighbors, and can be tried for a crime only if they agree. And then another jury, the petit jury, will ascertain the facts and law of the case, and determine guilt or innocence. Plus there is a presumption of innocence until/unless guilt has been demonstrated to the jury's satisfaction.

Ours is such an amazing system! I can't imagine a system of justice superior to our own. In most of Europe -- excepting Great Britain, of course -- the defendent is presumed guilty unless/until proven innocent; and judges, not juries, make that determination.

I though it very interesting that Mahatmas Gandhi abolished the jury system -- a fixture of the British Empire -- when India gained her independence back in the late 1940s IIRC. I asked an Indian friend why India decided to shuck the jury system. She told me it had been rife with corruption. I didn't say anything, for I didn't want to be impolite. But speaking for myself, I would rather take my chances with "corrupt" neighbors than "corrupt" judges, any day....

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for all the information and insight! I didn't realize that India had abandoned the jury system. How bizarre. It is much easier to corrupt a single person than a "committee" of 12 or so.

Decades ago an attorney friend of mine was laughing about certain laws, regulations and ordinances that were still on the books in Texas - laws which noone in his right mind would try to enforce. And if he did, the jury would no doubt nullify it anyway.

One, he said, made it a crime to wear spike heels (because it could damage city streets). Another had to do with being caught with wire cutters (the suspicion was cattle rustling).

He said there was one little town which really deplored the automobile and passed an ordinance that there would be a speed limit in the town - and that it would not be posted.

But my favorite was a regulation for the railroads that if two trains from opposite directions should approach each other on the same track, that neither could proceed until the other has passed. LOLOL!

[joanie-f]

Jean, there are so many exceptional posts on this excellent thread!

I'd like to make one personal comment on your expressed discomfort early on with the Founders’ wording as to the unalienable rights of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

I, too, have always been uncomfortable with the ‘pursuit of happiness’ wording.

I teach our adult Sunday school class at church, which generally consists of between forty and sixty adults, ranging in age from about twenty-five to eighty.

In one of my lessons about three years ago, I brought up the fact that I hold our Founders in deep reverence, but that I do take issue with that portion of their wording in the Declaration.

I explained that, in my own personal experience, any time I ‘pursued’ happiness, I rarely, if ever, achieved my goal. And the happiest times in my life have always occurred simply as a by-product of making ‘right’ choices (as opposed to convenient, self-serving, or popular ones), rather than seeking happiness (a nebulous term, to begin with) as a goal in and of itself.

During that particular Sunday school lesson, my reference to that portion of the Declaration was only intended to be mentioned in passing. But, once that subject was opened to discussion, we spent the entire remainder of the hour focused right there, with many of the class members relating (sometimes very heart-rending) stories of their own that seemed to support the notion that happiness generally cannot be ‘pursued,’ but rather that it is a natural (and sometimes unexpected) result that occurs when we are willing to choose the ‘right’ path in pivotal life situations.

I do wish the Founders had acceded to the ‘right to property’ wording instead, as it appears in several other colonial documents. Under the rights established by the First Continental Congress: Declaration of Colonial Rights (1774), the first ‘right’ established for the English Colonies in North America is that they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent. And Boston's 1772 Rights of the Colonists echoed the same: Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly to liberty; thirdly to property.

I, for one, believe that the Founders’ (albeit small) divergence from Locke’s wording in his magnificent treatises on liberty was, in this particular case, a dilution rather than an improvement.

Again, Jean, many thanks for your superb essay at the head of this thread, and for inviting, and contributing to, the extraordinarily insightful comments that followed!
~ joanie …