My sense of things is that most jurors struggle to do the right thing. They work at the decisions we ask them to make. They try to follow the law. There are failures, to be sure. But in general, I trust a jury far more than I trust the weary eye of a judge. Lay jurors bring common sense and a fresh perspective to conflict. Judges have seen it all, and too often, to rely on common sense.
But I worry that by forcing juries to act in a vacuum, we deprive them of the right to make a reasoned moral response to the conflicts we ask them to resolve. This is particularly so in the criminal courts.
