Jury System Essay

1812 Words8 Pages
Justice means “fairness, impartiality, equity. It includes the concept of distributive justice, and application of affirmative action when this is desirable or necessary… justice means seeking the truth and basing judgements on evidence rather than on the eloquence of arguments for differing points of view.” (Last, John M. 2007). In court, Jury systems are not the only way to ensure justice. A panel of three or five judges is the most efficient way to ensure that justice has been reached. Any defendant has a right to ‘trial by one’s peers,’ the jury system supports this right as its members are a random selection of Australian citizens. The jury system ensures justice by ‘injecting common sense into a legal system otherwise dominated by lawyers’ (Horan, Dr. Jacqueline 2012), this community input helps to ensure that citizens feel that laws are developed by the people and for the people as it’s an important check against state power. However, with the rising complexity of evidence being shown in court, many people are beginning to feel that insufficient intellect is involved with juries (Horan, Dr. Jacqueline 2012). Lack of criminal or law based training as well as insufficient intellect leads to confusing and minimal understanding of cases and basic rules of law (Farouque, Farah. 2012). The rise of social media’s influence on society also raises many concerns of the right to a fair trial, as previously known information may not be disregarded like it is supposed to be, opinions are created prematurely, and biases may be formed (Keyzer, Patrick and Johnston, Jane. 2011). Television and popular culture also has a huge effect in jury rooms, expectation are very unrealistic and based highly on American television (Farouque, Farah. 2012), sometimes referred to as the CSI effect. (Horan, Dr. Jacqueline. 2012). Panels of experienced judges who have all studied law are much
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