Here is a contradiction between the two judgments. In
the civil suit, the law is declared to be obligatory upon A; in
the criminal suit, the same law is declared to be of no
obligation.
It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow
such consequences as these. Besides, it would be practically
impossible to maintain government on such principles; for no
government could enforce its civil judgments, unless it could
support them by criminal ones, in case of resistance. A jury must
therefore be paramount to legislation in both civil and criminal
cases, or in neither. If they are paramount in neither, they are
no protection to liberty. If they are paramount in both, then all
legislation goes only for what it may chance to be worth in the
estimation of a jury.
Another reason why Magna Carta makes the discretion and
consciences of juries paramount to all legislation in civilsuits, is,
that if legislation were binding upon a jury, the jurors (by reason
of their being unable to read, as jurors in those days were, and
also by reason of many of the statutes being unwritten, or at least
not so many copies written as that juries could be supplied with
them) would have been necessitated at least in those courts in
which the king's justices sat to take the word of those justices
as to what the laws of the king really were.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269