A judgment of the peers may be reviewed, and invalidated, and a
new trial granted. So that practically a jury has no absolute
power to take a party's goods, rights, or person. They have only
an absolute veto upon their being taken by the government. The
government is not bound to do everything that a jury may adjudge.
It is only prohibited from doing anything (that is, from taking
a party's goods, rights, or person) unless a jury have first
adjudged it to be done.
But it will, perhaps, be said, that if an erroneous judgment of
one jury should be reaffirmed by another, on a new trial, it must
then be executed. But Magna Carta does not command even this
although it might, perhaps, have been reasonably safe for it to
have done so for if two juries unanimously affirm the same
thing, after all the light and aid that judges and lawyers can
afford them, that fact probably furnishes as strong a presumption
in favor of the correctness of their opinion, as can ordinarily be
obtained in favor of a judgment, by any measures of a practical
character for the administration of justice.
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