Any United States judge or lawyer who routinely has the opportunity of interacting with delegations of judges, court officers, or lawyers from other countries invariably is confronted with one or more questions about the American jury system. The questions are prompted not only by curiosity about how the American jury system functions, but also by a profound lack of understanding of the whole idea of ordinary citizens with no legal training making decisions in seemingly complex fact situations involving the application of sophisticated legal principles.

I have, in my twenty-plus years of meeting with foreign delegations of judges and other legal professionals, been asked many times about the jury system, usually in the context of a strong skepticism about the use of juries in any legal system. My responses, framed by my 25 years experience as a practicing trial lawyer, are usually centered around my own personal perceptions and prejudices about the jury system, which include the following:

1. The jury system actually works. In some mysterious way ordinary citizens who sit on juries are able to understand the oral testimony given at the trial, including even complex technical issues that are sometimes presented. Studies have shown that judges agree with jury verdicts in the vast majority of cases, possibly as high as 90% of the time.
   
   
2. Judges can and do craft “instructions” to the jury stating the applicable law in a case in such a way that the legal principles contained in them can be readily understood and applied by ordinary citizens. Juries do understand those instructions and apply them correctly during their deliberations.
   
   
3. Almost all trial lawyers in the United States like the jury system and want it continued.
   
   
4. It is the job of every trial lawyer in a case to reduce the evidence presented to language and perceptions that the ordinary citizen can understand
   
   
5. The Constitution of the United States and of the individual states establish the right to a jury trial in almost all criminal cases and in some civil cases.
   
   
6. Participation in the jury system is a way of involving ordinary citizens in the administration of justice in the U.S. and in the individual states and educating them about it.

It is the sixth reason that is perhaps the most important reason in terms of benefits to society for keeping the jury system in the United States. In making this argument, I have never been made aware of any empirical research which supports it. I have just assumed that it is true.

Now there is a book written by two academics, one researcher, and a practicing lawyer that does establish, through empirical research, not only that jury duty is useful for citizen understanding of the justice system, but also that it is very useful in promoting citizen participation in democratic society and its processes, including voting. In short, the jury system is important for maintaining the strength of American democracy.

The Jury and Democracy is an academic project that was supported by the National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and by the University of Washington. It is the result of a research project of some enormity – it continued for over a period of ten years and involved the analysis of responses to questionnaires from over ten thousand jurors from eight counties across the United States. Another part of the study involved personal surveys of thousands of citizens called for jury duty in King County, Washington.

The bottom line of all this research is that perception number six above was proven almost, to use a phrase from instructions in a criminal trial “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The authors state, in their “Overview of Our Argument in Chapter 1:

Chapter 3 presents our most simple and compelling finding – that deliberations on a jury causes infrequent voters to become more likely to vote in future elections.

But the research shows that jury service has an impact beyond merely increasing a citizen’s likelihood of voting in political elections. The authors also state at the end of Chapter 1:

We present narrative examples of people being changed by their jury experience with quantitative findings from a longitudinal survey that continued to track jurors several months after they completed their work at the courthouse. This investigation reveals general patterns, such as increased attention to news media and frequent participation in conversations  with neighbors about community issues. We also find more diffuse impacts, such as the tendency of jurors who reach guilty verdicts in criminal trials to become more active in charitable group activities after leaving the courtroom.

However the most important commentary for judges, lawyers and political scientists in the summary of the research is the following:

Chapter 7 shows how jury service changes not only behavior but also how people see the world. Using the same longitudinal survey data, we show that jury service often makes citizens more supportive of not only the jury system, but also of local judges and even the Supreme Court. Jurors can develop stronger faith in government and their fellow citizens, and they  come to see themselves as more politically capable and virtuous. (Emphasis added)

There is one development that the authors discovered in their research that is not comforting to those who appreciate and support the jury system and the American legal system. Research showed that the jury system is under attack by some reformers, that there is a declining appreciation for the jury system among the citizenry of the United States, and that the number of jury trials is declining in both the federal and state courts.

Although this book is scholarly in tone and content, and was probably intended for primarily an academic audience, it nevertheless provides valuable reading for all judges, lawyers and law professors in the U.S.  The findings of the authors provide strong support for the continuation of a court practice that was brought to the United States with the founding of the first English colony at Jamestown in 1607. An institution that is over 400 years old, one that has been the “backbone” of the trial system in the United States, should not be allowed to wither and die away, if for no other reason than to prevent the demonstrated adverse consequences of such abandonment for democracy that are described in this book. It is time for judges, court administrators and the organized bar in the U.S. to resist the efforts of reformers to do away with jury trials, and to advocate that the jury system not only not be abandoned, but expanded and used in every kind of court case for which it is appropriate.

This scholarly work will also be useful for legal system reformers in other countries that are considering adoption of the jury system, as Japan did several years ago.