When the criminal says: "I stand a better chance with a jury"; when the civilian says: "If I had the wrong end of the stick give me a jury," he is appealing not to the wrong side of the jury system, but to a quality which is not always recognized.
Law is an exact, definite statement of principles, absolute and apparently immutable. When a man on the street walks up to another and wantonly insults him, the law is, that the insulted party must turn and walk away. If the matter came before a jury they would never convict him for knocking the other down at once. The jury system is the mitigation of the law.
XVI[ToC]
LOOKING BACKWARD
Extracts from the Graduation Dissertation of a Columbia J.E. upon receiving his degree of Juridical Expert in 1947.
Historical investigation of obsolete customs is of little value beyond preserving some record of what may soon be forgotten.