Jury trial is one of our oldest rights, going back all the way to the English Magna Carta of 1215. But is it really that big of a deal?
About a hundred years before old King John signed the Magna Carta, Englishmen still had the option of trial by combat if they were accused of wrongdoing. The idea was that God would spare the innocent party to the duel. But the English nobility soon realized that trial by a jury of their peers and based on evidence was a better system. So, jury trial was already a cherished right of free men by the time they demanded the king guarantee it in the Magna Carta, which provided that: “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, …or in any other way ruined… except by the lawful judgment of his peers…”
Jury trial was one of the fundamental rights of English citizens, including the American colonists. So, when in 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act requiring a tax to be paid on every piece of paper used by the colonists, Americans didn’t like it. But when they learned that the act also required Americans accused of violating the law to be tried without juries, they were furious. And when, in 1774, Parliament followed up with the Intolerable Acts further limiting jury trial in the colonies, the prominent Boston lawyer John Adams, who would become our second president, wrote that “Representative 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."
And when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, one of the main reasons he gave for independence was “depriving us in many cases, the benefits of trial by jury,” and after independence, every new state constitution declared jury trial to be an inalienable right.
"The History of Our Freedoms" is produced by KEDT-FM in Corpus Christi. Dr. Bill Chriss is a historian and legal scholar. For more on history and the constitution, check out his blog at https://drbillchriss.substack.com/.
