- JURY DUTY: raw justice

For maximum justice.

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Le pire imbécile se croit le plus sage- apprentimarcv
Ne traitez personne d'imbécile – Jésus

The greatest fool thinks himself wisest - learnermarkv
Call no man a fool. Jesus

Chapters

• 0:07 problem solving by applying the golden rule
• 2:42 international law and its legitimacy
• 9:00 a key lesson in civics
• 11:27 legal short cuts

Transcript

WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

 - JURY DUTY -     

Juries are remarkable social instruments. During public ceremonies, civilization overcomes many grave problems by applying the Golden Rule. Too bad the positive influence of juries is hedged about by legal constraint and lawyers’ selectivity. Jury trials would work best if the following principles were applied beforehand.  

•       Jury selection would be random and irreversible except on humanitarian grounds. There would be no voir dire or challenge except to exclude the insane and felons serving out their terms. 
•       All evidence would be admissible to juries, including coerced testimony. Any suggestion of unnecessary coercion in evidence gathering would draw disciplinary review on the police in question. Let juries decide what information is prejudicial, whether lawyers are misleading and which police misdeeds require counter-punishment. In many cases, a verdict of innocent pronounced for a suspect mistreated by the police would authorize a corresponding investigation of the police in question.
•       Juries would be responsible for sentencing. Penalties, fines and additional surveillance might be proportional to the number of votes received by a Defendant. 

o   Innocent: Twelve jurors for

o   Innocent by Majority: From eleven to seven for

o   Retrial with a new Jury: Split Decision

o   Guilty by Majority: From eleven to seven against

o   Guilty: Twelve against 

Just an example; another might be: 

o   Innocent: Twelve or eleven for (to neutralize the random sadist)

o   Innocent by majority: From ten to eight for

o   New trial: From seven to five for

o   Guilty by majority: From eleven to nine against

o   Guilty: Twelve against
 

Nonetheless, ancient Hebrew judges used to let a detainee off if they found him guilty by unanimous vote; something to think about. The presumption of innocence should be jurors’ first inspiration and expectation. Judges would remind them it is the most promising benchmark of justice. 

Jury decisions would be subject to review only if members of the same jury summoned a higher court and another jury, based on appeals addressed to them by the condemned, care of the first Court in question. A simple majority of jurors could call for this retrial.

Judges and lawyers would be subject to disciplinary review initiated by the juries they served poorly. This last is very important. Fewer than a dozen Federal Judges have been dismissed for cause under historic standards of discipline. 

 The future World Court – empowered with decision-making over global issues of mass life and death – should base its decisions and disciplinary reviews on the deliberation of untampered juries. Almost every trial, criminal and civil, should go before a jury.

In The Shield of Achilles (Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, New York, 2002), Phillip Bobbit analyses international law and its claim of legitimacy. He concludes that its latest claim appears to be based on States’ agreement to submit to its jurisdiction. 

More and more often, these States have failed to protect their national citizenry from terrorism, for example, and improve its living standards despite shrinking resources. Due to these failures, the latest incarnation of nation-states is being replaced by market states whose only claim to legitimacy is the unearned profit they pass on to financial (info) elites. This is Mr. Bobbit’s thesis in a nutshell. 

Since his work was published in 2002, these market states have confirmed their illegitimacy through various swindles, voting district gerrymandering, environmental disasters, abuses of disaster capitalism, financial meltdowns and massive transfers of illegitimate wealth upwards (growing exponentially over time with ruinous effects on host nations). 

Unlike prior regimes, their ascent to power has not yet required an epochal war (unless it is the Western world’s against the Muslim Ouma). This kind of war can last several generations under the aegis of prior regimes, during which various contenders take sides; win or lose intermittently; and drop out, change sides or get replaced by previously neutral newcomers. It ends up with a near-universal peace treaty that defines the share of constitutional arrangements and political regimes of those states, more or less in accordance with the wishes of the victors.

This model confirms Learner’s thesis: we submit to Darwinian selection for more insidious and deadly weapon states. 

An outline of Mr. Bobbit’s analysis includes: 
The Treaty of Augsburg (1555) – the Princely State
The Peace of Westphalia (1648) – the Kingly State
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) – the Territorial State
The Congress of Vienna (1815) – the State-Nation
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) – the Nation-State
The Peace of Paris (1991) – the Market State 

 
Almost bloodlessly and practically overnight, this latest sort has proven itself unfit to rule as the Soviet Communist regime was during its collapse. Failed states cannot justify their own national legitimacy much less that of international law.

So we are back on square one. Two basic questions remain to be answered: 

“…If the body of international legal rules cannot uniquely determine the legality of a particular act by the parties it is supposed to govern, how can it be law? And if international law is law, why doesn’t it seem to have any effect?” p. 642.
 

If the legitimacy of international law cannot be based on that of adherent states, since they are undergoing their own form of breakdown and retain none for themselves, what is left? The cleaver for that Gordian knot is trial by randomly selected juries in a court of law. 

In support of their case before this court, each side’s lawyers could call upon any argument, philosophical position, historical treaty, etc., that Mr. Bobbit lists so well. They will uphold their argument with any fact, norm, precedent, agreement, document, contract and myth if applicable. They will call on any intellectual point of view, permutation and quibble without limit. All of them will be equally valid and admissible as long as relevant to the case. No philosophical school or administrative criterion could claim dominance over the others; each would prove equally acceptable within this adversarial setting. As in other trials, over-long and complex presentations will work against those who present them, compared to clearer summaries granted a better hearing.

None of them could confirm or deny the legitimacy of that ruling. Only the vote of a duly appointed jury could do so, followed by the judgment of history. If these juries are selected in an honestly random manner, their decisions and those of history would turn out identical, matching the objectivity of their judgment.

In essence, international law between states likens to civil law between individuals in a state and criminal law between the individual and the state. After all, a nation-state is a colonial aggregate of individuals with its own history, needs and aspirations as well as social/cultural equivalents; the same way individuals are colonial aggregates of cells with their own … etc. According to our precedents within the state, arguments against international law are void. 

Contradictions are even more apparent in the case of international law. Unlike in-state law, there is (as yet) no higher tangible power to call upon for ultimate resolution. Otherwise, the same parameters apply; the best individual solution would also be the best collective one.

The law gains legitimacy when it upholds justice more often than injustice; preferably, much more often; ideally, always. If it fails to do so, it does not matter what system of justice is established; what checks and balances it claims; how seductively elegant its philosophy; or how well educated, well paid or of elite status its officers. 

Claimants, their advocates, state patrons and allies, as well as officials of the court: each of them could prove themselves to be insane, venal, biased, criminal or fascistic militants (for whatever reason) and thus pervert justice to fulfill their warped priority.  Psychopaths specialize in this kind of gradual infiltration and eventual takeover.

Mr. Bobbit and the constitutional scholars he invokes tie themselves in knots to create a top-down system of justice so perfect it would avoid all these liabilities. In short, a black box capable of issuing pure justice regardless of circumstance and antagonists. 

This project is doomed to fail: any weakness not already revealed would be uncovered at some later date and exploited in a process of Darwinian selection, until the entire system collapsed from those ill effects.

The solution is not top-down perfection but bottom-up reliability. No better way can be found to avert this abuse than duly constituted juries of randomly selected peers doing their best to fulfill their naïve sense of justice, preferably guided by a judge (male or female) deprived of decision-making powers and mandated to provide jurors with the best advice they ask for. This is the key to justice, be it in resolving contractual disputes, individual punishments (that often result in vendettas and more crime without this arrangement), or the settlement of international quarrels (which often flash off in war without it).

These days, jury empanelment resembles an old-time three-ring circus. Like lion tamers, law school graduates whip down jurors. Court officers “screen acceptable juror candidates” for days on end, even though the courts are less and less forthcoming with swift justice. Those coming from forbidden backgrounds (like law enforcement or the military) get rejected from jury duty. Other causes for dismissal include ethnicity, poverty, firmly held views on crime and punishment, or a history of police or criminal victimization. None of these would be cause for jury dismissal on PeaceWorld. 

Basically, nowadays, every juror goes on trial before the suspect, no matter how often officers of the court deny this fact. 

A simple test exists for courtroom procedures. Assuming you were on trial, would you care whether members of your jury were subject to voir dire or not? Think hard, lest justice be disserved. 

According to Alexis De Tocqueville, jury duty was the key civics lesson of American citizens. Jury duty inspired their civic devotion because the fate of total strangers was entrusted to their care. 

Currently, that lesson consists in being summoned from one’s home or job for indefinite periods, being grilled on delicate personal matters, rejected over arbitrary legalisms and bullied by supposedly omniscient, deliberately misleading court officials. Many people dodge this boring, intrusive and demanding task. They consider themselves entitled to shirk this duty and call those who fulfill it fools. 

Weapon managers applaud this perversion of justice. Courts stigmatize responsible citizens as powerless pawns of central authority. In complex, formal ceremonies, perfectly acceptable jurors are stripped of privacy then branded incompetent and unnecessary for the State. 

What a perfect lesson in citizenship!

By this means and many more, weapon mentality ensures that most citizens turn into civic autists. 

We could do better.

There is no better protection against political reaction – or its flip side, chaosism – than the empowerment of randomly selected juries. I repeat, jury duty is the primary lesson in the sacred school of citizenship. As such, it must never be tampered with, lest we corrupt the entire constitutional system — as we are succeeding to do today. 

In truth, the duty of juror should be the sacred obligation of every good citizen. "Show up in good faith, do your civic duty and be honored for it." Period.

Any lesser endeavor disgraces us. 

Local jury members might share the same prejudice against a certain kind of defendant or case. This was the original reason voir dire was adopted in cases decided by juries in the United States: to counteract practically universal race prejudice. In those cases, protocols were established to permit a change of venue to dodge local prejudice. These should be reinforced. However, random jury selection would never again be compromised for that reason.

No doubt clever lawyers will corrupt change-of-venue protocols, just as they warped the random selection of juries to achieve a bias in favor of defendants rich enough to afford that expensive advantage (as in the obscene TV show “Bull”). In that case, new protocols will be needed. In the meantime, simplicity and elegance above all!

The more momentous the court decision, the greater the call for a randomly selected jury and the more exactingly its unhampered conclusions should be documented and enforced. Jury trials should remain open to the public, yet never become public spectacles. 

During too many civil lawsuits, potential jurors are eliminated from duty if they disclose some understanding of the complaint — job-related, school-learnt or self-taught. Law school graduates eliminate the best-informed jurors from juries. Unqualified jurors must rule on complex issues with no help from informed insiders. They are at the mercy of any distortion court officers can dream up. 

Judges worsen this confusion. They refuse to answer juror requests for clarification of the law (which should be their primary task). They reject pertinent evidence as inadmissible. They forbid note taking and other juror initiatives. Finally, they override jury decisions whose outcome disturbs their sense of propriety. This kind of jury tampering would cease.

In addition, when civil litigants agree to settle during a trial, they often agree to drop the original complaint and seal the details of the case in secret, such that no-one may review them — especially not the public and the press. In such cases, court officials conspire with litigants to deny significant information from the public. Great social evils are tabled for decades, saving some judicial time but jeopardizing the safety of future innocents. The public suffers from this denial. 

Courts should seek the greatest common good. Any lesser pursuit is license for escalating banditry.

Legal settlement agreements should expose serious problems of corporate malfeasance to public scrutiny. Otherwise, out-of-court settlements should have taken place earlier, before a formal trial. Court intervention should open wide the doors of public transparency. Actually, this suggestion would speed up many civil disputes, since most of them would be settled out-of-court, in private, long before they became matters of public transparency. The unilateral, public declaration of a dispute could set a mandatory timeline for agreements out-of-court, at the end of which a transparent court case would be mandatory.

Ladies and gentlemen of the court, please note. The Law is not intended to deter crime, not to prop up current power structures, not to identify and punish the guilty or any other such paranoid nonsense. 

Sociologists have come to agree (what a miracle!) that the only thing that legal systems hold in common, when compared to custom and religion, is the imposition of penalties. That is not really the case; those who violate custom and religion are often imposed penalties, and the legal system often spares the rich and powerful from well-deserved penalties.

 The primary function of good law is to liberate the weak from capricious penalties imposed by the strong. Custom and religion never delivered on that promise, on the contrary. The weak would protect themselves best by serving the Law as honest jurors and letting this sovereign process protect them.

During court sessions, judges should not browbeat their jurors with the obligation of jury duty and penalty for failing to serve it. Instead, they should rally them to the Golden Rule: “Do unto him what you would rather others would do unto you. Judge him according to your wish to be judged under the same circumstances.” One of Christianity’s greatest contributions to law and civilization, even though this rule was broadcast by faiths much older and more varied than juvenile Christianity.

The best body of law unlocks doors both material and behavioral — as in: “We don’t feel the need to lock our doors at night or when we leave home.” Insofar people do not think such things spontaneously, the Law has failed. No police intervention all by itself, no matter how forceful, can pull us out of this tailspin into chaos. 

A mature weapon state is also a state of terror where medieval gates must be bolted shut every night, where police and criminal elites are the only ones who bear arms amidst a citizenry of disarmed peasants as vulnerable and suspicious as they are dangerous and suspect.

The contrary would embody a universal militia well-armed and virtuously dependable, a police force that rarely felt the need for guns, and a criminal element that wouldn’t dare flash them — not our constantly renewed yet thousand-year-senescent weapon tyranny. 

Peace society will replace terror with physical abundance and inexpensive mediation (preferably free of user fees and funded as a more cost-effective branch of law enforcement). They will be of such superior quality, sophistication and user-friendliness that public confidence and personal security will reign supreme. 

Randomly selected juries will uphold the Law and secure justice — like no-one and nothing else could. Such a jury-driven system will mature over time, gathering strength and clear-sightedness as it becomes commonplace.

As demonstrated by current weapon states, juries deliver certain justice more dependably than law school Mandarins; no matter how well trained, overpaid, technically competent and elite in status these Mandarins might think themselves. Sovereign juries would work better. 

Ladies and gentlemen activists of the court, please get used to these ideas.

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COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net