Juries: I just want to make one point perfectly clear—well, as clear as I can make it anyway.
In a voluntary society, there would be absolutely no compulsion to even use a jury: disputants would be free to choose whatever means of resolution they mutually agreed to use. Dueling, as well as casting of chicken bones, might be mutually acceptable to some;
To presume any degree of force or compulsion because people choose to engage the services of a group of people to resolve a dispute displays a lack of understanding of a voluntary society;
Early juries were not a response to the state, government, or religion, but, as far as I have been able to determine from much research, a response to a need for a mutually-agreeable way to settle disputes.
Social groups who first used third parties to settle disputes were agreeing to give up “going to war” as a way to settle a dispute. By agreeing to third parties’ decisions, violence was often avoided, and vendettas and ambushes, with their resultant continuation of the hostilities, avoided.
I trust that this clarification will be perceived as simple common sense by those who might question the role of the jury—or any other conflict resolution mechanism—used in a free society.
feralfae