On the record
All the other free British subjects are excluded; whereas, at common law, all such subjects are eligible to sit in juries, whether they be freeholders or not.
Said by
Lysander Spooner
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gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “All the other free British subjects are excluded; whereas, at common law, all such subjects are eligible to sit in…”
Editor's note · Context
Spooner highlights the exclusion of non-freeholders from juries, contrasting it with common law eligibility.
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More from Lysander Spooner
They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance of the law.
Since Magna Carta, we have evidence showing quite conclusively that all freemen, above the age of twenty-one years, were eligible as jurors.
It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow such consequences as these.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.