A jury is made up of people who take time out from their regular routines to perform one of the highest duties of U.S. citizenship. “I consider trial by jury,” Thomas Jefferson said, “as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
Trial by jury has been around for hundreds of years. England’s Magna Carta (1215 A.D.) mentions a form of jury trial. But it wasn’t until the 1600s that the accused were given the right to a trial by jury to safeguard their rights. In response to the Stamp Act of 1765, which denied violators in the American Colonies a trial by jury, the Stamp Act Congress stated: “[T]rial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every
