Why in the USA a bunch of random people (jury) decide the fate of other people and not the actual judge?

Question

I’ve always been confused by this.

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Why would you want a bunch of randoms to decide your fate, and not the actual judge with a law degree and years of experience?

Why do those people have more power than the judge? They can decide anything they want and the judge is basically just the guy who signs and does the paperwork.

In: 2634

Answer 1

The reason the jury exists is probably historical: prior to the Magna Carta, the only real source of appeal was the local sovereign — you’d be escorted to the sovereign’s court and you’d present your case, and the sovereign would decide the matter.

That’s where we get the word ‘court’ in the sense of a legal assembly — from the French *cour* (‘an enclosed yard’), which is where the sovereign and his entourage adjudicated.

As you can probably guess, that wasn’t always the most efficient (or fair) manner of dispensing justice. A sovereign that was having a bad day might just make an arbitrary judgement to be done with it; the king’s advisors might influence the sovereign’s decision, and — of course — the accused were usually common folk, and the sovereign might simply *not care* enough to be fair and just.

To keep the sovereign’s power in check, the idea of a ‘jury’ slowly formed. The sovereign had to at least make a *pretense* of being fair before a jury, because ruling unfairly was likely to spark rebellion.

Originally, jurors were selected from neighborhood witnesses, who passed judgement based on what they themselves knew. Juries initially didn’t decide matters of fact — they were simply a cross-section of the defendant’s neighborhood, chosen at random based on their knowledge of certain matters.

If a person was accused of, for example, smithing a shoddy piece of farm equipment, one of the jurors would likely be a local blacksmith, so that the court could rely on his knowledge as a smith to ensure the testimony was accurate.

It wasn’t until fairly late, historically speaking, that a jury became a body of impartial arbiters that decided on matters of fact, rather than relying on their own knowledge.