Jurors are not officers in any sense.

Then why jurors take oaths to fulfill specific duties?

The jurors are not exercising the powers of any office or the state…

They’re exercising the powers of the office of juror.

They are overseeing and constraining those who do exercise the delegated power of the state

Jurors have the power to make decisions that no other office holds. For example, in the State of Texas, only jurors can hand down a death penalty. The jurors do not merely oversee whether the decision of other offices to decide to impose the death penalty was correct, they actually impose the sentence themselves.

When an individuals sits on a jury, they can make decisions denied to any other individual public or private. Those decisions will direct the use the state power. That makes them subject to the obligations of any office.

They are more akin to a corporate board of directors than the management of the company.

I would say that reinforces my point. Corporate board member is role that comes with responsibilities and limitations of scope of power.

Your arguments make sense when talking about grand juries, but not petty.

Among its other responsibilities, it is the jury that assures that the individuals delegated the power of the state have justified taking the action they propose at trial.

But is that not what all public officials and servants do? We divide power over many offices, the police (many independent kinds), prosecutors, judges, prisons etc. Each office has a specific role and scope of powers that limit and check the power of the other offices. When officials and servants use the powers granted them to pursue their own ends, we call that corruption.

Jurors are no different. While it is a temporary office, selected by lot, it is still an office and one takes an oath to fulfill the duties of that office. The office of a juror comes with both a specific role and scope of powers. Just as with any other office, when the juror use the powers of the office to pursue their own ends, they become corrupt.

Every office has some form of extraordinary power intended for rare cases when the system fails. These extraordinary powers will destroy the system if over used. For example, judges can overturn jury’s guilty verdicts when they believe the verdict so divorced from the evidence that it must be wrong. However, if judges used that power routinely, it would wreck the jury trial system.

We shouldn’t let the fact that jurors are ordinary citizens injected into a system of professionals obscure the reality that jurors exercise the power of the state and with that power comes responsibilities and restrictions.

I couldn’t disagree more. At all times we act as individuals morally responsible for our actions and their consequences regardless of our legal duties and defences. It is the state through its officers that acts as the agent of the people. Among its other responsibilities, it is the jury that assures that the individuals delegated the power of the state have justified taking the action they propose at trial.

Let me say I agree with your post. Polemics lose out to reasoned discussion, every time.

Isn’t the purpose of a trial decided by one’s peers generally accepted to be a protection of the accused from capricious and arbitrary prosecution of the state?

Yes, but the function of jury in any individual case is to see to the application of the law i.e. the will of the people and precedence. The role of the juror is to act as a safeguard to ensure that the law is applied to the particular case they serve on. The scope of jurors concerns begin and end in the trial they set on.

Dragging in larger issues in particular cases corrupts the juror’s role. Jury nullification renderers the specific facts of the case irrelevant.

Your impatience with a case that seems a fine example of the gist of what creates judicial activism …

I don’t under the argument in that paragraph at all and I am a computer geek/biologist.

Isn’t the purpose of a trial decided by one’s peers generally accepted to be a protection of the accused from capricious and arbitrary prosecution of the state? The office of prosecution would more correctly termed an “agent”. The prosecutor exerts himself in favor of the objectives of state. Providing a jury is a requirement constitutionally imposed upon the state.

Your impatience with a case that seems a fine example of the gist of what creates judicial activism (namely legislative ineptness, general convenience, and judicial over-reaching because of the ineptness and convenience) makes me wonder if you are a member of the legal bureaucracy.

I would argue that jurors wield the power of the state by virtue of creating the verdicts that allow the state to act. In Texas, for example, only a jury can hand down a death sentence, the ultimate state sanction. If juries become nothing but forums for people to express their personal preferences then the power of the juror becomes corrupt just as it would for if any public servant took the same action.

Your post, coupled with the poll ratings of Congress for the last few years, indicates we have (should have?) less confidence in the laws such lawmakers develop. Surely, this leads to a devaluing of the “rule of law” – a huge loss. Like Shannon, I’d felt such arguments were post-modernist. But, of course, our drug laws sometimes seem foolish.

By the way,these are issues discussed in most basic English courses, which tend to use Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” & Thoreau’s essays as basic texts in freshman composition/argumentation courses and Billy Budd as a basic text in American lit ones. I’m not sure if we teach these in a way that leads to or detracts from jury nullification when those students later end up on a jury. But the concepts would be ones with which many jurors would be familiar.

The state has a representative in the prosecution – jurors act as representatives of the people. Which is not precisely the same thing. I (perhaps lamely) associate this with the “proven/not proven/not guilty” verdict option set in the Scottish system.

We shouldn’t forget that when we sit on a jury, we act as agents of the state. Our rulings have incredible consequences for many people. The idea that individuals have a right to arrogate this power to serve their own ends attacks the very foundation of the rule of law and of government accountable to the people.

I see this idea as part of the spreading corruption of post-modernism in our society. One key idea of post-modernism is that individuals have the right and obligation to use whatever power they have to change society as they see fit. The idea that the power of a position comes with limitations and responsibilities is considered merely the dead hand of the past holding back the enlightened. The advocation of wide spread use of jury nullification fits this pattern. It argues that people should use the temporary grant of state power inherent in the assuming the office of a juror as a tool to do what they believe is right regardless of the wishes of the people of the polity who gave them that power.