On the record
All such legislation is as much unconstitutional and void, as though it abolished the trial by jury altogether.
Said by
Lysander Spooner
Source
gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “All such legislation is as much unconstitutional and void, as though it abolished the trial by jury altogether.”
Editor's note · Context
He asserts that any legislation that violates the principles of common law regarding juries is as invalid as abolishing the jury system entirely.
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They were even allowed to grant pardon to criminals, and to correct by their clemency the rigors of justice.
Since Magna Carta, we have evidence showing quite conclusively that all freemen, above the age of twenty-one years, were eligible as jurors.
The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the…
It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.