On the record
All such legislation is as much unconstitutional and void, as though it abolished the trial by jury altogether.
Said by
Lysander Spooner
Source
gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “All such legislation is as much unconstitutional and void, as though it abolished the trial by jury altogether.”
Editor's note · Context
He asserts that any legislation that violates the principles of common law regarding juries is as invalid as abolishing the jury system entirely.
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More from Lysander Spooner
The people considered their jurisprudence as a part of their inheritance.
It was simply, that they would neither convict the innocent, nor acquit the guilty.
Juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it.
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.