Inspired by a show about Al Capone on the history channel last night, I decided to look up where the right to a “jury of your peers” originated. To my surprise, the phrase does not appear in the Constitution, nor does it appear in the Amendments. :eek:
So, after a little more poking around, I found this site, which confirms that there is no mention of a “jury by your peers” in the Constitution or the Amendments.
So, my question naturally follows: from where did this phrase originate? Googling has provided more ignorance than answers, so I turn to the teeming millions.
“Peers” is more a term English law than American law, where all citizens are equal. It means your social equals, so if you are a noble, you only have nobles on your jury, and no commoners. Vice versa for commoners – you won’t get a duke or an earl on your jury.
“Jury” comes (like many English legal terms) from Anglo-Norman French, and ultimately from the Latin “jurare”, meaning to swear. (I.e., a jury is sworn to discover the truth about something).
Medieval juries were more literally a jury of one’s peers than juries are today. Each year, a few jurors would be selected, and they would preside over all the trials in that year. The juries were members of one’s community; they were one’s neighbors, and of a similar social class. Giles is right that a commoner would be tried by a jury of commoners, but no further distinction would be made. A freeman, for example, would not necessarily be tried by a jury of freemen, and a villein (a person who owned no land) would not be tried exclusively by villeins.
One of the ideas, I think, that juries were made up of one’s neighbors is that medieval English law values the idea of self-policing communities. One might be less likely to commit a crime if they knew they would have to answer for it in front of their neighbors. (Men in medieval villages were organized into groups of 12 that were mutually responsible for crimes, so a criminal not only hurt himself but 11 of his friends.) The later idea that juries should have no prior knowledge of the case did not exist in the medieval era. Medieval villages were close-knit communities, and it would have been very difficult to find someone who hadn’t heard about how John of Bath stole a chicken from William the Smith.
Do criminal cases with Peer defendants ever occur? I’d be interested to know what the procedures are for forming the juries on those cases. And what about Knights? If a knight were a defendant in a criminal case, would they have to form a jury exclusively of other knights?
IIRC, peers charged with serious crimes used to have the right to be tried before the House of Lords, but this was abolished some time in the 19th century. Now they get twelve randomly-selected citizens like everyone else.
The right of peers to be tried by the House of Lords (or, if Parliament was not sitting, by the court of the lord high steward) was abolished in 1948. The most famous of the later trials was that of Bertrand Russell’s elder brother, the 2nd Earl Russell, for bigamy, as illustrated here.
No. Remember that the English definition of nobility was very restricted, extending only to the peerage and, more arguably, their immediate families. Knights therefore always significantly outnumbered the numbers of peers. Moreover, once the idea of knighthood had become disconnected from military service, it was actually rather rare for peers to be knighted except as a member of one of the orders of chivalry.
I know this thread is ancient, but I feel compelled to revive and add the following:
SACRAMENTO, California (AP) – The California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.
And the wive or widow of a peer had the same right to be tried in the Lords as her husband. Even when she was accused of murdering said husband. His children, even his eldest son & heir (who mave have a courtesy trial) did not. IIRC bishops were considered the social equivalent of peers (the ones not in the Lords didn’t get any of the legal priveliges though); priests were more on the level of gentry.
Interesting. I know there’ve been proposal to let legal immigrants vote, at least in local elections (& historically alot of states did allow “alien suffrage” until the 20th century). New Zealand allows all permanent residents to vote (but not hold office) regardless of citizenship and the UK gives Commonwealth & Irish citizens the same political rights as Britons after they’ve lived in the UK a year. Personally I think it’s a horrible idea to let non-citizens vote. Being able to participate in the body politic is one of defining characteristics of citizenship if not the defining characteristic.
While it is true that bishops had the equivalent rank of peers (all English Anglican bishops have precedence over barons), the right to trial before the House of Lords is an example of how being a member of the House of Lords was not the same as being a peer. Even those bishops who did sit in the Lords were not entitled to be tried there. Whereas certain people who did not sit in the Lords (minors, peers’ wives, Scottish and Irish non-representative peers) did have that right.
And at least at one point, Lords, even those in Parliament, were not necessarily tried by the House of Lords. There were special courts like the Court of Star Chamber that were created. Star Chamber specifically was supposed to try powerful Lords equitably because powerful peers were routinely escaping justice for crimes since their military and political prominence made peers in Parliament unlikely to ever vote to convict them.
Star Chamber quickly turned into something different from a court designed to make sure peers were properly prosecuted, and instead turned into a court where the King could get his personal political enemies easily convicted of treason. The King’s privy council (usually the highest of the high Lords in the country, but sometimes high ranking ecclesiastic lords or occasionally talented commoners would sit on the PC) were the ones who sat as judges there.
when juries started the common man traveled by foot. no one wanted to or even had the time to walk more than they had to. the noble class in order to get people to show up offered beer to the jurors. after time this got to be more expense than the nobles wanted to pay but they couldn’t just stop the practice. so the nobles had to find a way around this. the nobles told the people they had misheard what was being said and there was no beer involved it was your peers.
Didn’t Charles I argue that his trial was illegitimate. Because of the principal of jury of your peers, he could only be found guilty by a jury of other monarchs?
Except that, in practice, there was no overlap between the jurisdictions of the House of Lords and Star Chamber. A peer’s right to trial by the House of Lords (or the Court of the Lord High Steward) applied only in treason and felony cases. The Court of Star Chamber, in contrast, did not hear treason or felony cases, whatever the rank of the defendant. (Whether it could have heard felony cases was never entirely clear, but this made no real difference - Star Chamber could not impose the death penalty or confiscate property, so it always made more sense to prosecute such cases at common law.)
