On the record
How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government, if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?
Said by
Lysander Spooner
Source
gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government, if they…”
Editor's note · Context
Spooner questions how juries can defend liberties if they cannot define what those liberties are.
Share
More from Lysander Spooner
In short, they acknowledge themselves hostes humani generis: enemies of the human race.
They neither ask, nor expect, any mercy, if they should ever fall into the hands of honest men.
When they have once taken our money, they have the decency to get out of our sight as soon as possible; they do not persist in following us, and robbing us, again and again, so long as we produce anything that they can take from us.
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…