Lysander Spooner: “It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow such consequences as these.”

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 was simply, that they would neither convict the innocent, nor acquit the guilty.

But there is no reason why a judge should have the power of punishing, for contempt, any more than for any other offence.

And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.