I detest the jury system especially for civil cases. The jury system is forced service, just one step above slavery. I understand that the constitution requires the right to a jury trial, but I think that professional juries could still be used. The court system treats jurors poorly, not thinking anything of wasting time. For civil trials, the litigants should pay jurors.
This practice of grabbing people from the street is detestable. The legislature should prevent this practice. The court needs to find another way to ensure adequate jury pools.
How is that any different than a bench trial? No; a jury should be made up of representatives from the community.
The jury system is far from perfect, and it's a pain to serve on a jury . . . I know, I just served in the fall, for the first time in my life! (I was asking one of the lawyers why in the heck he didn't strike me, knowing that I was a lawyer. He said there were other people he needed to strike worse!)
Professional juries is a rotten idea, especially in civil cases, we have some experience of that with arbitration panels. You get the same results you get from bureaucrats - I've never had an arbitration proceeding where the arbitrators didn't "split the baby" - i.e. get a compromise rather than a just result. If we could compromise, we wouldn't be in arbitration, now would we?
Ordinary people are the best jurors, and unfortunately the only way to get them is via the summons/venire method. This has worked quite nicely since Anglo-Saxon times, and occasional forays into tinkering with the system (the six man jury for example) have not worked out very well.
As Winston Churchill said about representative democracy, the jury system is not a perfect system, but it's better than all the other ones that have been tried.
I sat on a civil case, by the way.
“I think that professional juries could still be used.”
I would have to disagree. “Professional Juries” would violate the right of Americans to be tried by a jury of their peers.
Serving on a jury is not “one step above slavery”. Rather, it is the essential step to assure that the citizens make the final decisions on law as it is applied to their fellow citizens.
That is why we still have jury nullification.