They Don't Represent Us by Lawrence Lessig

Author:Lawrence Lessig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

SOME OF US

Imagine a village called Jury, Alaska, and imagine that the people in Jury, Alaska, believe in “the jury.” Both civil and criminal cases are tried before juries. Those juries determine an extraordinary range of important questions. They decide whether murderers will be executed. (Alaska has never had the death penalty, but neither has it had a town called “Jury.”) They decide how much in damages a negligent doctor will have to pay an injured patient. They decide whether police officers will be punished for the use of excessive force.

The strange (and hypothetical) thing about (this hypothetical town of) Jury, Alaska, however, is that by law, except for the lawyers and the parties in the case, absolutely every adult in Jury sits on every jury. The courts webcast every trial. The lawyers post their evidence to a common website. And a daily tweet from the courthouse administrator informs the citizens of Jury when a new trial is started, and when their votes in any trial are required. Failing to vote is a crime, and each year, those failing to vote are fined.

When this system was started, it made some sense. Jury, Alaska, is a remote village. When founded in the 1930s, there was no television that could reach it, or any radio of any interest. Trials were held in the evening. And since there was nothing else to do—especially in the dead of winter—people would willingly watch the trials, and vote. The town thus created its own entertainment, in a sense. At first people would show up to the courthouse, en masse, for a potluck dinner. Eventually the town wired the courthouse with CCTV.

But over time, of course, technology improved. Today the Internet reaches Jury, Alaska. So too do satellite TV, cable TV, and best of all, Netflix. Nothing constrains the citizens of Jury to watch Jury-courtTV. Some do, some don’t. “It’s a free village,” the citizens insist.

The citizens of Jury defend their system with the principle of democracy. Every citizen of Jury is an equal citizen, citizens of Jury say. Every citizen, they insist, ought to have an equal role in determining how justice in Jury will be meted out. So every citizen is therefore entitled to the vote on every jury. Any true democracy, the citizens of Jury insist, would grant nothing less.

So then imagine a citizen from Jury visited a courthouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In Lancaster, the 60,000 or so citizens also have courts. They also have juries. But only a small number of Lancaster citizens ever serve on those juries. Jury pools are randomly summoned, based on the voting rolls in the city. From that random pool, a dozen plus alternates are selected for any particular criminal trial.

A citizen of Jury, Alaska, might challenge a judge in Lancaster: “How can you call yourself a democracy, when by law you exclude 99.9997 percent of citizens from service on a jury? Why do citizens give away their franchise so easily? Why don’t more defend their right to

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