On the record
If that be the true principle of the trial by jury, the trial is utterly worthless as a security to liberty.
Said by
Lysander Spooner
Source
gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “If that be the true principle of the trial by jury, the trial is utterly worthless as a security to liberty.”
Editor's note · Context
Spooner claims that if juries are bound to enforce unjust laws, their role as protectors of liberty is rendered meaningless.
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They neither ask, nor expect, any mercy, if they should ever fall into the hands of honest men.
They acknowledge it to be our unquestioned right and duty to kill them, if we can; that they expect nothing else, than that we will kill them, if we can; and that we are only fools and cowards, if we do not kill them, by any and every…
They do not tell us that we are the freest and happiest people on earth, inasmuch as each of our male adults is allowed one voice in ten millions in the choice of the men, who are to rob, enslave, and murder us.
In short, they acknowledge themselves hostes humani generis: enemies of the human race.