Removing juries: 'A move towards an authoritarian state' | Hacker News Reader

Removing juries: 'A move towards an authoritarian state'

theguardian.com

40 pointsbinning24 comments

When I see juries in American movies it always seems like a bit of an joke and manipulating them is a common plot theme. Just very random, the opposite of what I expect from an justice system. Many non-authoritarian states don't use them. Most of Europe and India for instance.

When I think of low corruption I certainly think of India.

I don't think the boring reality of most jury trials would make for an interesting screenplay.

It’s a silly bit of theater and American exceptionalism.

Infamously, “grand juries” are supposed to be a check against bringing frivolous charges, but they’ve never done this: there’s a famous quote about a prosecutor being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They’re also used to kill trials which are politically inconvenient but which the government doesn’t want to take the blame for burying, usually for killer cops: just tell the grand jury not to indict and then say “welp, nothing we could do.”

All the romantic stories about jury nullification being a check against government overreach are also crap. Historically the most common use in practice, by far, was when juries would exonerate people who’d been caught dead-to-rights lynching black men.

Ironically, grand juries refusing to indict frivolous political charges has been in the news quite a lot in the past couple of months.

It's true that jury trials have a less than perfect history of applying justice (though of course I think it's fair to say that the judges presiding over those trials exhibited similar trials so the counterfactual of a bench trial may have been the same outcome). That said, my understanding is that jury trials are just generally favorable to defendants compared to bench trials.

FWIW jury trials are arguably less vulnerable to corruption, which is a benefit. Would be hard to pull off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal#Criminal... (which wrongly put thousands of children in jail for the financial benefit of judges) with juries.

I think calling it 'American exceptionalism" is a little reductive. The idea that a jury trial is a protector of civil rights in a system that upholds the law as something no-one is above literally dates back to Magna Carta. Suggesting that this throughline of civil liberty is "silly theater' is not a serious proposition.

Or killing a CEO perhaps? Or fighting back against tyrants/blatantly corrupt officials?

Just because you didn't agree with the cases doesn't mean it was any less of an act of speech of the populace against the efforts of the authorities.

Do you fear something about what the next wave of nullifications may be used for?

A notable exception is the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men with Henry Fonda. One of my favorites.

When I see juries in American courts, for example when I've served on one, it seemed like a group of people who take their job quite seriously. You are correct in that what a jury gets is a very curated set of information. The intention being to keep the jury focused on the details of a very specific situation with evidence that is processed in such a way as to be as "reliable" as possible.

It is by no means an accurate or incorruptible system. When we design and prove out a better, more robust alternative, I'll be eager to learn about it.

Juries are a kangaroo courts and should be abolished. One screaming example is Emmett Till case (1955). Just this case should cause immediate abolition of that circus.

I'm sure you don't mean it this way. But this comment happens to mirror the 2025 standard argument against democracy. We focus on some imperfection in democracy. The next step is we say "It's broken. Let's junk it."

"joke and manipulating them is a common plot theme"

Much more difficult to manipulate a bunch of jurors than pay off one judge. This is why it's mostly in the movies.

"Most of Europe and India for instance."

India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Scammers with lots of money running call centers and diploma mills regularly get off completely by paying off judges.

Having judges only does make me feel better. I can just pay them off when I don't want to go to jail.

Don't take what you see in movies as representative of reality. It's not.

From my experience watching American TV, dogs are really good at solving mysteries.

My initial thought about juries is that they are inherently more fair, as they represent the people.

Change always happens in the public, which then causes people to vote a certain way, which then changes the laws.

So you end up in situations where what you did is wrong by law, but you get a better outcome because of the jury, as the jury is the public, as opposed to a judge, and usually well-paid, meaning quite disconnected from the 'common man'. In the US for example judges are elected, which means they should represent the public better.

So it's not as black and white.

Maybe for the UK it would be an authoritarian move, but I can definitely say that the other European states which don't use juries seem to me less authoritarian than the UK is - even as of today. Maybe the problem at the root is the mistrust people already have in the UK system? Because if we're only afraid of stereotypes, they wouldn't be worse for a judge than for a jury.

> I can definitely say that the other European states which don't use juries seem to me less authoritarian than the UK is

They have very different legal systems, very different courts systems, very different constitutional law.

Many European states are more authoritarian than the UK, although it is hard to make comparisons.

I would not be surprised to see the UK enact something like the Ottoman millet system, and grant semi-autonomy to its various ethnic and religious communities to run their own internal affairs. I don't think this would be a good move, but doesn't seem too unlikely at this stage.

The UK's three biggest ethnic minorities do have some autonomy in their territories - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The idea of giving minorities that do not have a well defined territory is a complete non-started, and there is no demand for it.

There is some extent to which religious groups can (as anyone one can) use arbitration for some disputes (but that is ultimately subject to secular law) as some Jewish and Muslim groups do or have procedures to decide matters for purely religious purposes as Catholic and Anglican canon law tribunals do (e.g. annulments and internal decisions).

I have no idea why you think anything more is even remotely likely.

I'd love 12 random strangers to tell me I have done my job correctly, regardless of their level of expertise in my field.

Going off the broader pattern of recent changes, I believe that's a feature here not a bug.

By definition eliminating juries is a move toward an authoritarian state.

EDIT: Sorry if this came across "absolutist". I'm saying transferring power upward from the jury to the judge is a step towards centralizing power. That is true by inspection.

But I'm not saying that eliminating juries is, by itself, the whole slippery slope to losing freedom. I'm not even saying that having juries is necessary for freedom. I'm saying it's one safeguard. It's important where I live.

Would you mind quoting that definition?

You might not be aware, but a lot of democratic and definitely not authoritarian countries don't make use of juries at all or only in a limited way.

For countries that have juries now, the definition is so obvious that maybe it's "under the radar". It goes like this: Take power away from the people on the jury. Give that power to a judge. It's more centralized. I guess I could say "by parsing the original statement" rather than "by definition."

I didn't say that juries/no juries is a test, by itself, for authoritarianism. It's not. For countries that do fine without juries, apparently the trade-off of giving power to the judge is working fine. Given everything else in the whole system. But the rest of us don't have that whole system.

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