| Description |
369 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Pt. 1. Juries Assert Their Power Over Royal Excesses. 1. The Father of Our Country. 2. "It Is My Royal Will and Pleasure...!" 3. What It Takes to Be a Good Czar -- Pt. 2. The Jury Responds to Public Hysteria. 4. Practitioners of the Detestable Arts -- Pt. 3. Jurors Rally in Defense of Freedom of Speech. 5. "The Greater the Truth, the Greater the Libel": The Trial of John Peter Zenger, August 4, 1735, New York City. 6. Alien and Sedition Acts Trials, 1798 to 1800 -- Pt. 4. Juries as Early Abolitionists and Defenders of Minority Rights. 7. Laws Do Not Make People Free, People Make Laws Free; or, Who Needs a Proclamation of Emancipation Anyway? 8. A Man's Home, a Man's Castle: The Trials of Dr. Ossian Sweet and Family, October and November 1925, and April and May 1926, Detroit, Michigan -- Pt. 5. Juries Support Women's Suffrage. 9. "I Have Decided She Was Not Protected in a Right to Vote!" 10. "She, Then and There, Was a Person of the Female Sex, Which She Well Knew!" |
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Pt. 6. In Search of an Impartial Jury. 11. Murder in Haymarket Square, Chicago, 1886 and 1887. 12. When Is a Jury Not a Jury? The Trials of the Sons of Victor Hugo, 1851, and Emile Zola, 1898, Paris, and a Commentary on His Service as a Juror by Andre Gide, 1913 -- Afterword: "They're Coming to Get You!" |
| Summary |
"In We the Jury ... veteran jury watcher and historian Godfrey D. Lehman demonstrates the validity of the American constitutional republic, in which the people hold sovereign power and express their will more effectively by delivering verdicts of conscience than by voting. The jury, when it is independent, nullifies unjust laws, topples kings and, as a representative of the governed, holds the governors in thrall to its consent. The jury is Abraham Lincoln's "government of, by, and for the people" in operation." "Lehman looks at twelve historical examples from both Europe and America ranging over four centuries, which include cases involving freedom of the press and of assembly, freedom of religion, women's and minority rights, voting rights, and much more. Here are stories not only of the famous, but also of the often nameless jurors who were the true heroes, as they stood on the side of liberty, even when tyrannical courts or governments tried to cow them with threats, reprisals, physical torture, and imprisonment. By exercising their power over government known as jury nullification, the sovereign people were able to call politicians to account and even to rewrite the law."--BOOK JACKET |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-365) and index |
| Subject |
Jury -- United States.
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Justice, Administration of -- United States.
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Law -- Political aspects.
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| LC no. |
97011435 |
| ISBN |
1573921440 (cloth : alk. paper) |
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