Lysander Spooner: “The trial by jury authorizes all this, or it is a sham and a hoax, utterly worthless for protecting the people against…”

Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.

They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…

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…

That the legislation of the king was of no authority over a jury, is further proved by the oath taken by the kings at their coronation.