Trial By Jury Quotes - Page 2

• The grand solid merit of jury trial is that the jurors ... are selected at the last moment from the multitude of citizens. They cannot be known beforehand, and they melt back into the multitiude after each trial.

  John Henry Wigmore

  Citizens, Trials, Lasts

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• I would like people to remember that I kept the peace when I was president and I worked for peace, that I espoused human rights in its broadest definition, not only freedom of speech but freedom of assembly, freedom of worship and trial by jury but also the right of people for people to have a decent home to live, food to eat, employment, healthcare, self respect, dignity. So I think the broad gamut of human rights, peace and freedom. I would like to be remembered for those things to the degree that I deserve it and I still have a long way to go.

  Jimmy Carter

  Home, Thinking, Self

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• The corporations don't like open courts of law, trials by jury. They want to privatize by pushing people into compulsory arbitration where they win most of the time and the whole process is pretty secret.

  Ralph Nader

  Winning, Law, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Let the people have property and they will have power - a power that will forever be exerted to prevent the restriction of the press, the abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege.

  Noah Webster

  Wisdom, People, Forever

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• Trial by jury must and shall be preserved! Amidst the throng of crude sacrilegisms ... that assail us nowadays in the legal sanctuary, none is more shortsighted, none more dangerous, than the proposal to abolish trial by jury.

  John Henry Wigmore

  Trials, Sanctuary, Proposal

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• I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.

  Rand Paul

  America, Rights, Law

  FaceBook post by Rand Paul from Mar 06, 2013

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• If the federal constitution is to be construed so far in connection with the state constitutions, as to leave the trial by jury in civil causes, for instance, secured; on the same principles it would have left the trial by jury in criminal causes, the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, etc. secured; they all stand on the same footing; they are the common rights of Americans, and have been recognized by the state constitutions.

  Richard Henry Lee

  Rights, Habeas Corpus, Causes

  "Letters from the Federal farmer to the Republican".

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• I will now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Omission, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.337, Penguin

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• Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earlthy blessings - give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

  Patrick Henry

  Freedom, Jealous, Blessing

  "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?". Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

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• By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Army, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.11, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.

  Harlan F. Stone

  Law, Trials, Causes

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• I do not apologize for advertising. I think it is as vital to the preservation of freedom in my country as the free exercise of publishing a newspaper or the free exercise of building a church or the free exercise of the right of trial by jury.

  Thomas Dillon

  Country, Business, Exercise

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• Three features mark the Anglo-American system as different from all others. One is the extent to which our law is formed in litigation. Another feature is the way we conduct these cases: we pit antagonists against each other, to cast up from their struggles the material of decisions. A third- and largest in the public consciousness- is the trial by jury.

  Charles Rembar

  Struggle, Law, Decision

  Charles Rembar (2015). “The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System”, p.91, Open Road Media

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• When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Sports, People, Looks

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.34, Vintage

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• The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Writ, even Magna Carta itself, although justly deemed the paladia of freedom, are all inferior considerations, when compared with the general distribution of real property among every class of people.

  Noah Webster

  Wisdom, Real, Class

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• The trial by jury might safely be introduced into a despotic government, if the jury were to exercise no right of judging of the law, or the justice of the law.

  Lysander Spooner

  Exercise, Government, Law

  Lysander Spooner, Charles Shively (1971). “The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner: Anti-slavery writings”

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• Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

  James Monroe

  Religious, Rights, Government

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• Cross-examination is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth. ... Cross-examination, not trial by jury, is the great and permanent contribution of the Anglo-American system of law to improved methods of trial-procedure.

  John Henry Wigmore

  Discovery, Law, Doubt

  John Henry Wigmore (1923). “A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law: Including the Statutes and Judicial Decisions of All Jurisdictions of the United States and Canada”

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• Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

  Patrick Henry

  Death, Sweet, Freedom

  Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond, Va., 23 Mar. 1775.

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• A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government.

  Byron White

  Government, Order, Criminals

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• ... The popular attitude toward the administration of justice should be one of respect and confidence. Bureaucratic, purely official justice, can never receive such confidence. The one way to secure it is to give the citizen-body itself a share in the administration of justice. And that is what jury-trial does.

  John Henry Wigmore

  Attitude, Giving, Justice

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• "It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries."

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Law, Liberty

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