Jury Trial

Arguing that the original public meaning of “impartial” in the Jury Trial Clause was narrow, referring only to direct personal bias based on Founding-era legal dictionaries, early American case law, and both English and American history.

Arguing that Founding-Era juries were not constrained to judging the facts of cases but could also judge the law. Contending that juries were designed to provide a check-and-balance on the judicial and legislative branches and to safeguard individual rights by assessing the rightness of the law. Exploring whether originalism has the tools to sort through the constitutionalized aspects of the original founding era jury from any that may remain open to change.

Concluding based on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century legal dictionaries and scholars, colonial American history, and Founding-era documents and figures that the right to a jury trial was understood by the public primarily as a collective right of the people to publicly hand down punishment to wrongdoers in their communities, thereby infusing popular sovereignty into the judicial process, rather than as a protection for the accused.

Arguing that the public has a right to trial by a jury of one’s local community, which stems from the public’s right of access.

Contending that the Framers unanimously viewed the right to trial by a jury of the people served as a popular sovereignty mechanism within the judicial branch and that jury duty was also a right of the jurors as well as of the accused.

Articulating a general history of the criminal jury in the United States.

Arguing that the vicinage provision of the Sixth Amendment (in combination with the venue provision in Article III) ensures that the community whose interests are at stake in the outcome of the case are represented at the trial.

Explaining that the Sixth Amendment was adopted to ensure that a defendant’s trial would take place in the district where he committed the crime.

Arguing that the Framers understood the concepts of venue and vicinage to be separate and distinct from one another.

Tracing the historic origins of the right to trial by jury from the Magna Carta to the Founding.