I have two arguments to defend jury nullification. First of all, in our system “jury nullification” is NOT a policy. It is the name for the inevitable fact to that members of a jury can decide to vote “innocent” without being subject to some kind of interrogation.
My second argument is this: I think jury nullification is actually a good policy, because the only thing it produces are delays unless fully 12 out of 12 randomly selected citizens think this application of the law is completely unfair. If the citizenry believes a law is unfair with that much unanimity it probably IS unfair.
Well, to your first point, jurors cannot be held accountable for their verdict. Obviously if they could the whole system breaks down. Jurors can exploit this protection to return a false verdict with impunity, but it is exactly that - false testament. Others will try to say that jury nullification is an intended feature of the legal system but IMO it’s just exploiting a limitation.
Secondly, you’re not talking about an unfair law, you’re talking about an unjust outcome. All laws will produce unjust outcomes in some specific circumstances. However a law against murder reduces more harm than it causes, so it’s worth upholding.
To me, the idea of having juries decide to set aside the law in cases they feel are unjust is an absurdity. Imagine if Trump were on trial and the jury unanimously returned not-guilty despite obvious guilt.
To be fair, both Biden and Trump set aside the law by not actually banning TikTok, so it makes sense that at least in some specific instances, normal people are allowed to as well.
I have two arguments to defend jury nullification. First of all, in our system “jury nullification” is NOT a policy. It is the name for the inevitable fact to that members of a jury can decide to vote “innocent” without being subject to some kind of interrogation.
My second argument is this: I think jury nullification is actually a good policy, because the only thing it produces are delays unless fully 12 out of 12 randomly selected citizens think this application of the law is completely unfair. If the citizenry believes a law is unfair with that much unanimity it probably IS unfair.
Well, to your first point, jurors cannot be held accountable for their verdict. Obviously if they could the whole system breaks down. Jurors can exploit this protection to return a false verdict with impunity, but it is exactly that - false testament. Others will try to say that jury nullification is an intended feature of the legal system but IMO it’s just exploiting a limitation.
Secondly, you’re not talking about an unfair law, you’re talking about an unjust outcome. All laws will produce unjust outcomes in some specific circumstances. However a law against murder reduces more harm than it causes, so it’s worth upholding.
To me, the idea of having juries decide to set aside the law in cases they feel are unjust is an absurdity. Imagine if Trump were on trial and the jury unanimously returned not-guilty despite obvious guilt.
To be fair, both Biden and Trump set aside the law by not actually banning TikTok, so it makes sense that at least in some specific instances, normal people are allowed to as well.
No, that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Presidents are elected to weird ultimate power, and are intended to do so with the support of the best advice available.
A President is not a king. We fought a couple wars about it. We might fight another soon.
… and yet …