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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
Beginning with an appropriate overview of why the U.S. Founding Fathers saw the need for a jury system, this well-prepared 8 page essay argues that the jury still remains an ultimate symbol of true American Democracy. Recent Supreme Court decisions as well as the linkage between jury service and other rights of political participation are discussed. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Jurysyst.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
the habits and duties of citizenship. By enacting the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments to the Constitution, the Framers sought to install the right to trial by jury as a
cornerstone of a free society. The Framers of the Constitution felt that juries -- because they were composed of ordinary citizens and because they owed no
financial allegiance to the government -- were indispensable to thwarting the excesses of powerful and overzealous government officials. The jury trial was the only right explicitly included in each of
the state constitutions devised between 1776 and 1789 (Savage 40). And the criminal jury was one of few rights explicitly mentioned in the original federal constitution proposed by the Philadelphia
Convention. Anti-federalists complained that the proposed constitution did not go far enough in protecting juries, and federalists eventually responded by enacting three constitutional amendments guaranteeing grand, petit, and civil juries.
The need for juries was especially acute in criminal cases: A grand jury could block any prosecution it deemed unfounded or malicious, and a petit jury could likewise
interpose itself on behalf of a defendant charged unfairly. The famous Zenger case in the 1730s dramatized the libertarian advantages of juries (Zobel 8). When New Yorks royal government sought
to stifle its newspaper critics through criminal prosecution, New York grand juries refused to indict, and a petit jury famously refused to convict (Zobel 8-9). But
the Founders vision of the jury went far beyond merely protecting defendants. The jurys democratic role was intertwined with other ideas enshrined in the Bill of Rights, including free speech
and citizen militias. The jury was an essential democratic institution because it was a means by which citizens could engage in self-government. Nowhere else -- not even in the voting
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