Judgement by jury

[Adrian II]

Adrian, the distinction between dispensing justice and checking injustice is too subtle for me. Can you explain why these two things are not effectively the same.

No Judiciary would be able to shape a 'just society' even if it wanted to. All that a Judiciary does is see to it that the state ('the People') respects the established rules and values of society whilst upholding the public order. The notion that a Judiciary could or should dispense justice is an illusion.

Re OJ Simpson and the recent Dutch case, is not your argument here about secrecy and not the jury system, and in the end don't both cases come down to whether the evidence is convincing or not. Is the judge going to say anyting different from: "I was not convinced that this or that piece of evidence was conclusive"?

No, the difference is that in the Dutch case all the relevant considerations are available in the public domain. Indeed, our judges say a lot more than what you suggest. In complicated cases one hundred page verdicts are no rare exception. This is to ensure that the judge accounts for every syllable of his final verdict. It is this precise account that is lacking in jury verdicts.

Where we disagree is over who is best at making this decision, 12 amateurs or 1 (or 3 professionals).

No, that is not the point at all. What we disagree about is whether all considerations leading to a verdict should be presented to the public (Dutch system) or kept behind closed doors (jury system). I opt for the former.

N.B. Dutch judges who write shoddy verdicts will constantly see them overturned by higher courts until their entire prestige is down the drain and they are forced to resign from the bench.