Specialised Courts

[Svartalf]

The very idea of "professional jurors" is ludicrous.

If you want a panel decision rather than an individual one, set up collegiate courts with a 3 judge panel.
But if you want a citizen'ss judgment, then making juror a profession is silly, as you'd just have a bunch of judges' assistants, not a panel of real citizens making a 'man of the street' decision on a peer.
A professional juror is a legal profession and voids the judgment by peers idea behind jury judgment.

[MrJonno]

The very idea of "professional jurors" is ludicrous.

If you want a panel decision rather than an individual one, set up collegiate courts with a 3 judge panel.
But if you want a citizen'ss judgment, then making juror a profession is silly, as you'd just have a bunch of judges' assistants, not a panel of real citizens making a 'man of the street' decision on a peer.
A professional juror is a legal profession and voids the judgment by peers idea behind jury judgment.

3 judges are too easy to corrupt, harder with 12 and I almost certainly don't want my 'peers' making important decisions about anything.

Society where possible should be generally be run by specialised professionals whether its juries, pilots, doctors etc not amateurs. If there was actually an alternative to democracy I wouldn't even give the public the but the alternatives so far have been worse

[mistermack]

The very idea of "professional jurors" is ludicrous.

If you want a panel decision rather than an individual one, set up collegiate courts with a 3 judge panel.
But if you want a citizen'ss judgment, then making juror a profession is silly, as you'd just have a bunch of judges' assistants, not a panel of real citizens making a 'man of the street' decision on a peer.
A professional juror is a legal profession and voids the judgment by peers idea behind jury judgment.

Not necessarily.
You can have a panel of two or three judges, with technical training, and two or three jurors, who get paid when they sit, but otherwise work in the industry. Of who did work in the industry, and retired.

That's just off my cuff. I'm sure there are better options than that. As there was a bill in parliament, killed by the House of Lords, there should be a record of what their plan actually was.

[Svartalf]

I sure hope that corrupting a judge is not an easy endeavour, let alone 3... if judge corruption is a problem, then jury reform is a secondary problem that will be addressed after the more important one of judge corruption has been solved

[rainbow]

I favour getting back to trial by ordeal.

Competitive gin drinking?

[Clinton Huxley]

Personally, I think the proposal is undesirable and unworkable. Has it been tried anywhere?

[rainbow]

Personally, I think the proposal is undesirable and unworkable. Has it been tried anywhere?

Absolutely, old chap.
In the Colonies, a man who couldn't hold his liquor was considered to be a bit queer, don't you know?
Not to be trusted, and certainly not one to be included in the cricket team.

[mistermack]

Personally, I think the proposal is undesirable and unworkable. Has it been tried anywhere?

We have family courts, employment courts and military courts.
They all deal with things which are not trivial, and have major effects on the lives of the people involved.
I can't see why a bit more knowledge and expertise will be detrimental to justice. Not if it's done well.

The status quo isn't so great. Fraudsters get off, and people get medical payouts that they don't deserve, and we all pay for it.
And trials collapse or drag on for months, costing millions, which we all pay for as well.

It's not like our system is the only workable one. Lots of countries have very different systems to us, and they work as well or better than ours.

[Clinton Huxley]

Yeah, I get that MM, though of course, British justice is the wonder and envy of the world. You'd end up, though, with a species of lawyer in control of the the prosecution, defence and jury. You'd have to have different "jury specialists" for different types of crime, as no-one can know it all. And "professional jurors" would be easy to find and either intimidate or bribe. I reckon it would be massively more expensive, too. The system we have may be be a bit crummy but I reckon others would be worse. We should stick with it until dispassionate, incorruptible artificial intelligences are put in charge.

[Svartalf]

We need the human touch. Artificial intelligence has no feelings for some of the necessary things.

[mistermack]

Yeah, I get that MM, though of course, British justice is the wonder and envy of the world. You'd end up, though, with a species of lawyer in control of the the prosecution, defence and jury. You'd have to have different "jury specialists" for different types of crime, as no-one can know it all. And "professional jurors" would be easy to find and either intimidate or bribe. I reckon it would be massively more expensive, too. The system we have may be be a bit crummy but I reckon others would be worse. We should stick with it until dispassionate, incorruptible artificial intelligences are put in charge.

I don't think it would cost more. If trials went along quicker, it would be cheaper. And you wouldn't do it for all classes of crime. Just a few very technical ones.
And if if artificial intelligence is incorruptible, it's hardly what I would call intelligent.

[Clinton Huxley]

I'm sure the fee structure of The Institute Of Jurors would be very reasonable....

[Svartalf]

Reasonable enolugh to motivate people to take to the profession, or reasonable as per the taxpayer?

[mistermack]

Do jurors get their expenses?
A panel of six, compared to a jury of twelve might not cost that much more. And a jury needs looking after. And the technical evidence would have to go much slower for a jury who know nothing of the subject.
Speed up the process, and the whole thing would cost less, even if a few jurors got paid.
If you save one day of court time, that's an awful lot of money.

[MrJonno]

It's not about whether there are draw backs with professional jurors but they are a far smaller problem than the average member of the public being an irrational moron