The jury system has already been implemented in a lot of countries throughout the world and even though a lot of people believe in this system and think that it is proper, a lot of people believe that this system doesn’t work that well and that we would be better off abolishing it. In order to understand the issue a little better, we are going to look at the pros and cons of the jury system.
List of Pros of the Jury System
1. Active Citizens in the Cause
Juries are usually active citizens performing jury duty. This means that part of our population is looking at itself and understanding its own actions, while performing a legal duty that allows the legal system to work properly. Essentially, we can all learn from the mistakes of others and that is something very present in the jury system
2. More Than One Opinion is Considered
The jury system doesn’t just use one jury per trial, there is usually a large amount of them and in order to come to a decision they must all agree on something. If they do not agree, they are probably going to have t actively discuss the issue in order to reach a decision. This means that more than one opinion is going to be heard, and more than one hypothesis is going to be looked at before a final decision is seen.
List of Cons of the Jury System
1. Juries Might Not Understand The Law
Juries did not have an proper training or formation to perform jury duty, they are just average citizens. This means that they might not have a proper understanding of the law and they might not even have a proper judgment regarding certain issues because of their own personal experiences. Even though juries aren’t just thrown into the trial at random, they might still not be properly qualified for it.
2. Juries Have Inconsistencies
Juries come from throughout the country and some of them might even be young and have almost no life experience to understand certain issues.. On top of that, they might be easily influenced and impressed by strong arguments or by an authority figure which means that the trial might not always be completely fair for both parties.
3. Juries Can Be Unfair
If a jury is there simply because it is his duty, than he is probably not going to care about what is happening in the trial. If he gets bored, if he stops paying attention and then understands something in a wrong way, that might influence his whole vision of what happened. At the end of the day, this can be unfair for one of the parties involved.
