Removing juries: 'A move towards an authoritarian state'

When I see juries in American courts, for example when I've served on one, it seemed like a group of people who take their job quite seriously. You are correct in that what a jury gets is a very curated set of information. The intention being to keep the jury focused on the details of a very specific situation with evidence that is processed in such a way as to be as "reliable" as possible.

It is by no means an accurate or incorruptible system. When we design and prove out a better, more robust alternative, I'll be eager to learn about it.

I don't think the boring reality of most jury trials would make for an interesting screenplay.

I'm sure you don't mean it this way. But this comment happens to mirror the 2025 standard argument against democracy. We focus on some imperfection in democracy. The next step is we say "It's broken. Let's junk it."

Don't take what you see in movies as representative of reality. It's not.

A notable exception is the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men with Henry Fonda. One of my favorites.

From my experience watching American TV, dogs are really good at solving mysteries.

It’s a silly bit of theater and American exceptionalism.

Infamously, “grand juries” are supposed to be a check against bringing frivolous charges, but they’ve never done this: there’s a famous quote about a prosecutor being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They’re also used to kill trials which are politically inconvenient but which the government doesn’t want to take the blame for burying, usually for killer cops: just tell the grand jury not to indict and then say “welp, nothing we could do.”

All the romantic stories about jury nullification being a check against government overreach are also crap. Historically the most common use in practice, by far, was when juries would exonerate people who’d been caught dead-to-rights lynching black men.

"joke and manipulating them is a common plot theme"

Much more difficult to manipulate a bunch of jurors than pay off one judge. This is why it's mostly in the movies.

"Most of Europe and India for instance."

India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Scammers with lots of money running call centers and diploma mills regularly get off completely by paying off judges.

Having judges only does make me feel better. I can just pay them off when I don't want to go to jail.

When I think of low corruption I certainly think of India.

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The UK's three biggest ethnic minorities do have some autonomy in their territories - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The idea of giving minorities that do not have a well defined territory is a complete non-started, and there is no demand for it.

There is some extent to which religious groups can (as anyone one can) use arbitration for some disputes (but that is ultimately subject to secular law) as some Jewish and Muslim groups do or have procedures to decide matters for purely religious purposes as Catholic and Anglican canon law tribunals do (e.g. annulments and internal decisions).

I have no idea why you think anything more is even remotely likely.

> I can definitely say that the other European states which don't use juries seem to me less authoritarian than the UK is

They have very different legal systems, very different courts systems, very different constitutional law.

Many European states are more authoritarian than the UK, although it is hard to make comparisons.

Would you mind quoting that definition?

You might not be aware, but a lot of democratic and definitely not authoritarian countries don't make use of juries at all or only in a limited way.

Are you implying that removing juries would improve alignment between general populace sense of justice and justice system outcomes? Because that would be an unfathomably bad take.