This example is sufficient to show that the very pith of the trial by jury, as a safeguard to liberty, consists in the jurors being taken indiscriminately from the whole people, and in their right to hold invalid all laws which they think unjust.
Spooner emphasizes that the essence of a jury's role in safeguarding liberty lies in its composition from the general populace.
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More from Lysander Spooner
Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.
All other laws, it is optional with each man to obey, or not, as he may choose.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.
It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent.