Editing Jury (section)

==Historical roots==
{{Globalize section|date=May 2024|England}}[[File:The Jury by John Morgan.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|''The Jury'', an 1861 painting by [[John Morgan (artist)|John Morgan]] of a British jury, all of whom then had to be men]]{{See also|Jury trial#History}}
The modern jury evolved out of the ancient custom of many ancient [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] tribes whereby a group of men of certain social standing was used to investigate crimes and judge the accused.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}} The same custom evolved into the [[vehmic court]] system in medieval Germany.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}} In Anglo-Saxon England, juries investigated crimes. After the [[Norman Conquest]], some parts of the country preserved juries as the means of investigating crimes.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}} The use of ordinary members of the community to consider crimes was unusual in ancient cultures, but was nonetheless also found in ancient Greece.

The modern [[jury trial]] evolved out of this custom in the mid-12th century during the reign of [[Henry II of England|Henry II]].<ref name=":3">[[W. L. Warren]], ''Henry II'', University of California Press, 1973</ref> Juries, usually 6 or 12 men, were an "ancient institution" even then in some parts of England, at the same time as Members consisted of representatives of the basic units of local government—''[[hundred (county subdivision)|hundred]]s'' (an administrative sub-division of the [[shire]], embracing several vills) and villages. Called juries of presentment, these men testified under oath to crimes committed in their neighbourhood. The [[Assize of Clarendon]] in 1166 caused these juries to be adopted systematically throughout the country.  The jury in this period was "self-informing," meaning it heard very little evidence or testimony in court. Instead, jurors were recruited from the locality of the dispute and were expected to know the facts before coming to court. The source of juror knowledge could include first-hand knowledge, investigation, and less reliable sources such as rumour and hearsay.<ref>Daniel Klerman, [http://lawweb.usc.edu/users/dklerman/documents/Klerman.Self-informing.pdf "Was the Jury Every Self-Informing"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719013900/http://lawweb.usc.edu/users/dklerman/documents/Klerman.Self-informing.pdf |date=2011-07-19 }} Southern California Law Review 77: (2003), 123.</ref>

Between 1166 and 1179 new procedures including a division of functions between the sheriff, the jury of local men, and the royal justices ushered in the era of the [[English Common Law]]. Sheriffs prepared cases for trial and found jurors with relevant knowledge and testimony. Jurors 'found' a verdict by witnessing as to fact, even assessing and applying information from their own and community memory—little was written at this time and what was, such as deeds and writs, were subject to fraud. Royal justices supervised trials, answered questions as to law, and announced the court's decision which was then subject to appeal. Sheriffs executed the decision of the court. These procedures enabled Henry II to delegate authority without endowing his subordinates with too much power.<ref name=":3" /><sup>:293</sup>

In 1215 the [[Catholic Church]] removed its sanction from all forms of the ordeal—procedures by which suspects up to that time were 'tested' as to guilt (e.g., in the ordeal of hot metal, molten metal was sometimes poured into a suspected thief's hand. If the wound healed rapidly and well, it was believed God found the suspect innocent, and if not then the suspect was found guilty). With trial by ordeal banned, establishing guilt would have been problematic had England not had forty years of judicial experience. Justices were by then accustomed to asking jurors of presentment about points of fact in assessing indictments; it was a short step to ask jurors if they concluded the accused was guilty as charged.<ref name=":3" /><sup>:358</sup>

The so-called [[Wantage Code]] provides an early reference to a jury-like group in England, wherein a decree issued by King [[Æthelred the Unready]] (at [[Wantage]], c. 997) provided that in every Hundred "the twelve leading [[thegn]]s together with the [[Reeve (England)|reeve]] shall go out and swear on the [[relic]]s which are given into their hands, that they will not accuse any innocent man nor shield a guilty one."<ref>Oxford History of England, 2nd ed 1955, vol III Domesday Book to Magna Carta, A l Poole, pp.397–398.</ref> The resulting [[Æthelred the Unready#Origin of the jury|Wantage Code]] formally recognized legal customs that were part of the [[Danelaw]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wantage.com/museum/Local_History/Wantage%20Church%20History.pdf|title=Wantage Church History|last=Garnish|first=Lis|year=1995|work=Local History Series|publisher=[[Vale and Downland Museum]]|access-date=2009-09-24|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070925045004/http://www.wantage.com/museum/Local_History/Wantage%20Church%20History.pdf|archive-date=2007-09-25}}</ref>

The testimonial concept can also be traced to [[Normandy]] before 1066, when a jury of nobles was established to decide land disputes. In this manner, the Duke, being the largest land owner, could not act as a judge in his own case.<ref>See, for example, discussions of the Brunner theory of testimonial, rather than judicial participation as jury origin, explored in MacNair, [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.3/macnair.html ''Vicinage and the Antecedents of the Jury – I. Theories''], in Law and History Review, Vol. 17 No 3, 1999, pp. 6–18.</ref>

One of the earliest antecedents of modern jury systems is the jury in [[ancient Greece]], including the [[Polis|city-state]] of [[Athens]], where records of jury courts date back to 500 [[BCE]]. These juries voted by [[secret ballot]] and were eventually granted the power to annul [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]] laws, thus introducing the practice of [[judicial review]]. In modern justice systems, the law is considered "self-contained" and "distinct from other coercive forces, and perceived as separate from the political life of the community," but "all these barriers are absent in the context of classical Athens. In practice and in conception the law and its administration are in some important respects indistinguishable from the life of the community in general."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Carey|first=Christopher|date=October 1994|title=Legal Space in Classical Athens|url=|journal=Greece and Rome|volume=41|issue=2|pages=172–186|doi=10.1017/s001738350002338x|s2cid=162576482 |issn=0017-3835}}</ref>

In juries of the [[Justice in eyre|Justices in Eyre]], the [[bailiff]] of the hundred would choose 4 electors who in turn chose 12 others from their hundred, and from these were selected 12 jurors.<ref>{{cite book | title= A History of English Law | volume= 1 | first= William Searle | last= Holdsworth | author-link= William Searle Holdsworth | pages= 268–269 | year= 1922 | publisher= [[Little, Brown and Company|Little, Brown]] | edition= 3 | oclc= 48555551 | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=DQF-ASQE7xAC&pg=PA268 }}</ref>

===17th-18th century===
From the 17th century until 1898 in [[Ireland]], Grand Juries also functioned as local government authorities.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Grand Jury Collection |url=https://www.waterfordcouncil.ie/departments/culture-heritage/archives/collections/grand-jury.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221130222614/https://www.waterfordcouncil.ie/departments/culture-heritage/archives/collections/grand-jury.htm |archive-date=November 30, 2022 |access-date=2022-08-15 |publisher=Waterford City & County Council}}</ref> 

In 1730, the British Parliament passed the Bill for Better Regulation of Juries.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dowlen|first=Oliver|url=|title=Sorted : civic lotteries and the future of public participation|date=2008|publisher=MASS LBP|isbn=978-0-9811005-0-0|pages=38|oclc=682256689}}</ref> The Act stipulated that the list of all those liable for jury service was to be posted in each parish and that jury panels would be selected by lot, also known as [[sortition]], from these lists. Its aim was to prevent middle-class citizens from evading their responsibilities by financially putting into question the neutrality of the under-sheriff, the official entrusted with impaneling juries. Prior to the Act, the main means of ensuring impartiality was by allowing legal challenges to the sheriff's choices. The new provisions did not specifically aim at establishing impartiality but had the effect of reinforcing the authority of the jury by guaranteeing impartiality at the point of selection.

In some American colonies (such as in New England and Virginia) and less often in England, juries also handed down rulings on the law in addition to rulings on the facts of the case.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Suja A. |title=The missing American jury: restoring the fundamental constitutional role of the criminal, civil, and grand juries |date=2016 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-05565-0 |location=New York, NY |pages=15–16}}</ref> The American grand jury was also indispensable to the American Revolution by challenging the Crown and Parliament, including by indicting British soldiers, refusing to indict people who criticized the crown, proposing boycotts and called for the support of the war after the Declaration of Independence.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Suja A. |title=The missing American jury: restoring the fundamental constitutional role of the criminal, civil, and grand juries |date=2016 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-05565-0 |location=New York, NY |pages=24}}</ref>

In the late 18th century, English and colonial civil, criminal and grand juries played major roles in checking the power of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.<ref name=":4" />

===19th century===
In 1825, the rules concerning juror selection in England were consolidated. Property qualifications and various other rules were standardised, although an exemption was left open for towns which "possessed" their own courts.<ref name="Juries Act 1825, s50">{{cite web |url=https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1825/50/pdfs/ukpga_18250050_en.pdf|title=An Act for consolidating and amending the Laws' relative to Jurors and Juries.|date=June 22, 1825}}</ref> This reflected a more general understanding that local officials retained a large amount of discretion regarding which people they actually summoned. In the late eighteenth century, King has found evidence of butchers being excluded from service in Essex;<ref>{{cite journal |last1=King |first1=PJR |title='Illiterate Plebeians, Easily Misled': jury composition, experience, and behaviour in Essex, 1735-1815 |journal=Cockburn and Green (Eds), Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200-1800 (Princeton UP 1988)}}</ref> while Crosby has found evidence of "peripatetic ice cream vendors" not being summoned in the summer time as late as 1923.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Crosby |first1=K |title=Restricting the Juror Franchise in 1920s England and Wales |journal=Law and History Review |date=2019 |volume=37 |issue=1 |page=176 |doi=10.1017/S0738248018000639|s2cid=150306872 |url=https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/fulltext.aspx?url=247766/84A91BAF-7996-4285-921C-85219429B434.pdf&pub_id=247766 }}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable - 3 citations and only an impact score of .7 ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2024}}

With the adoption of the Juries Act (Ireland) 1871, property qualifications for Irish jurors were partially standardized and lowered, so that jurors were drawn from among men who paid above a certain amount of taxes for [[poor relief]].<ref name=":1" />{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable with only 6 citations published in a journal with an impact score of .7 ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2024}} This expanded the number of potential jurors, even though only a small minority of Irish people were eligible to serve.<ref name=":1" />

Until the 1870s, jurors in England and Ireland worked under the rule that they could not leave, eat, drink, or have a fire to warm themselves by, though they could take medicine.<ref name=":1" /> This rule appears to have been imposed with the idea that hungry jurors would be quicker to compromise, so they could reach a verdict and therefore eat.<ref name=":1" /> Jurors who broke the rule by smuggling in food were sometimes fined, and occasionally, especially if the food were believed to come from one of the parties in the case, the verdict was quashed.<ref name=":1" /> Later in the century, jurors who did not reach a verdict on the first day were no longer required to sleep in the courthouse, but were sometimes put up, at the expense of the parties in the trial, at a hotel.<ref name=":1" />

===20th century===
After 1919 in England, women were no longer excluded from jury service by virtue of their sex, although they still had to satisfy the ordinary property qualifications. The exemption which had been created by the 1825 Act for towns which "possessed" their own courts meant ten towns were free to ignore the property qualifications. This amplified in these towns the general understanding that local officials had a free hand in summoning freely from among those people who were qualified to be jurors. In 1920, three of these ten towns – Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham – consistently empanelled assize juries of six men and six women; while at the Bristol, Exeter, and Norwich assizes no women were empanelled at all.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Crosby |first1=K |title=Restricting the Juror Franchise in 1920s England and Wales |journal=Law and History Review |date=2019 |volume=37 |issue=1 |page=195 |doi=10.1017/S0738248018000639|s2cid=150306872 |url=https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/fulltext.aspx?url=247766/84A91BAF-7996-4285-921C-85219429B434.pdf&pub_id=247766 }}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable - 3 citations and only an impact score of .7 ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2024}} This quickly led to a tightening up of the rules, and an abolition of these ten towns' discretion. After 1922, trial juries throughout England had to satisfy the same qualifications; although it was not until the 1980s that a centralised system was designed for selecting jurors from among the people who were qualified to serve.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Thomas |first1=Cheryl |last2=Lloyd-Bostock |first2=Sally |title=The Continuing Decline of the English Jury |journal=N Vidmar (Ed), World Jury Systems (OUP 2000)}}</ref> This meant there was still a great amount of discretion in the hands of local officials.