On the record
The trial by jury protects person and property, inviolate to their possessors, from the hand of the law, unless justice, beyond a reasonable doubt, require them to be taken.
Said by
Lysander Spooner
Source
gutenberg.orgLysander Spooner: “The trial by jury protects person and property, inviolate to their possessors, from the hand of the law, unless justice…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote highlights the jury's role in safeguarding individual rights against unjust legal actions.
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More from Lysander Spooner
They neither ask, nor expect, any mercy, if they should ever fall into the hands of honest men.
For all these reasons, they are not only modest and sensible, but really frank, honest, and honorable villains, contrasted with these courts of injustice, and the lawmakers by whom these courts are established.
They do not tell us that all liberty and order would be destroyed, that society itself would go to pieces, and man go back to barbarism, if it were not for the care, and supervision, and protection, they lavish upon us.
They do not tell us of the almshouses, hospitals, schools, churches, etc., which, out of the purest charity and benevolence, they maintain for our benefit, out of the money they take from us.