Thank God that the United States declared independence from England two-and-a-half centuries ago and dependence upon the Lord at the same time. Great Britain, which was a prime mover toward human progress in many ways, seems to be going through a period of jettisoning its former greatness – one move at a time. On the chopping block? Trial by jury for many cases.
Trial by jury is as old as 829 AD in France, but according to Judge Joseph A. Wapner (a TV judge in the 1980s), the system could be traced back to the law of Moses. That would mean 1400 years before Christ.
In Guideposts Magazine (November 1988), Judge Wapner wrote: “Taken for granted in America and Great Britain, trial by jury, one of the strongest safeguards against government’s arbitrary authority, remains a rare privilege in much of the rest of the world. But where, long before the Magna Charta, did it gain its first, rough expression? That’s right, in Leviticus. To be precise, in chapter 19, verse 15: “In righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor.”
The Magna Charta (the Great Charter) of 1215 AD ensured the right to a trial in England by a jury of one’s peers. The Magna Charta was a milestone in legal history. This was an agreement by the nobles and signed by King John (basically against his will) to curtail the king’s tyranny. Trial by jury was only one part of this great forerunner to constitutional government.
Dr. Peter Lillback – founding president of Providence Forum, for which I serve as the executive director, as a division of Coral Ridge Ministries – said of the “Great Charter,” which enshrines the trial by jury as part of its guaranteed rights: “Magna Charta is one of the most important documents in world history. The Magna Charta, issued in 1215, is the foundation of constitutional liberty in English-speaking lands. By compelling King John to obey laws that limited his power precisely, it became the earliest guarantee against tyranny in England.”
But now, Great Britain, notes Breitbart News, is “looking at abolishing the right to a trial by jury in all but the most serious cases, such as murder, rape, terrorism, and others.”
Breitbart News adds, “The U.K. government is trying to abolish trial by jury — because it’s too expensive.”
Yipes. The news source quotes Lord Toby Youn, the founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), who opposes this idea: “Trial by jury is a bulwark of British liberty and if people charged with speech offences are denied that right, they’re more likely to be convicted.” Twice as likely, in fact, in free speech cases.
Member of Parliament Nigel Farage reacted to this potential development: “The jury trial has been an essential part of our freedoms for centuries. It is our protection against the state. For the government to remove it in most cases will give our politicised judiciary far too much power.”
In September, Forbes magazine highlighted Great Britain’s current curtailing of free speech in an article entitled, “People Are Being Thrown In U.K. Prisons Over What They’ve Said Online. Can Free Speech Be Saved?”
Meanwhile, historically, because of British influence, here in the U.S., we have the trial by jury system. In fact, it is even in our Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, Amendment #7.
But long before we became a nation, in his Concessions of 1676, William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, wrote of the justice administered in a trial by jury, describing it this way: “That all differences, between the planters and the natives, shall also be ended by twelve men, that is, by six planters and six natives.”
In his First Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson declared, “You should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government….Equal and exact justice to all men…freedom of religion; freedom of the press… and trial by jury impartially selected.”
Jefferson also once declared, “Trial by jury [is] the best of all safeguards for the person, the property and the fame of every individual.”
For this article, I asked historian Bill Federer of AmericanMinute.com for a statement. He told me regarding America’s founders: “They understood that the judges’ loyalty went with their paycheck. If the judge wanted to keep his job, he had to always make decisions in line with the will of the King’s agenda.”
Federer added, “Efficiency in the area of justice was viewed by America’s founders as bad. The most efficient form of government is a totalitarian dictatorship. America’s founders set up an inefficient government on purpose. Slow to making good decisions but thankfully slow to making irreversible bad decisions.”
This kind of misguided development in England (or, for that matter, any part of the Western world) shows us the ongoing need for eternal vigilance to safeguard our God-given liberties.
