If anything whatever could be dictated to them, either of law or evidence, the sentence would not be theirs, but would be dictated to them by the power that dictated to them the law or evidence.
Spooner argues that if juries are influenced by external dictates, their independence and judgment are compromised.
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Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.
If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.
They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…
Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.