THE
DEMOCRACY DEFINED
CAMPAIGN.
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THE RESTORATION CAMPAIGN.
"History will recall that the Mission to achieve Restoration and Universal Adoption of the genuine Trial by Jury is the single most important political activity in the civilised world. The well-being, prosperity, protection and happiness of all people depend upon its successful outcome."
Kenn d’Oudney, CEO/Director,
The Democracy Defined Campaign.
DEMOCRACY DEFINED
Campaign Philosophy Index
(Standard English Spelling)
I. IS YOUR COUNTRY A DEMOCRACY OR IS YOUR GOVERNMENT A DESPOTISM ?
ANNULMENT-BY-JURY: WHY IS THE CITIZEN-JUROR’S JUDGEMENT ON THE JUSTICE OF THE LAW SO VITAL A PART OF ANY FAIR AND COMPETENT JUSTICE SYSTEM ?
II. THE RIGHT OF JURIES COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE;
Old Bailey Law Courts, London.
III. ILLEGAL "SELECTION" OF JURORS.
IV. WHY THE LEGAL PROFESSION CANNOT DEFEND YOU.
V. WHAT IS THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN ?
VI. GET ACTIVE - JOIN THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN.
FREE MEMBERSHIP.
Campaign philosophy supported by academics, doctors and judges (U.S. & U.K.). If you want to do something positive to make our world a better place in which to live, join the Campaign. Download and distribute the free posters and educational pamphlets, and contact us today for your free Membership and privileges (click on the Membership button above). Welcome!
DEMOCRACY:
IS YOUR COUNTRY A DEMOCRACY OR
IS YOUR GOVERNMENT A DESPOTISM ?
THE WORD.
To preclude arbitrary (i.e., tyrannical; illegal) government and establish liberty and equal justice for all, the Hellenes created the society in which the common people have the power in Trial by Jury to judge the laws and overrule laws and measures enacted by the national assembly. The word the Hellenes gave to describe this state of society in which the citizens have control through the Trial by Jury to judge, make and enforce the laws and overrule the government, the wealthy and powerful, the aristocrats and all the people who sought to rule them, was ‘demokratia’, which translates into English as Democracy.
Democracy is founded on the Trial by Jury, derived from the Hellenic Athenian Constitution of government by Trial by Jury. Through its etymology, history and signification, the word democracydesignates the constitutional justice system. Constitutional Democracy is based on the sovereignty of the individual citizen-juror as the final arbiter of law and protection of the people from tyranny.
The Hellenic Athenian Constitution of government by Trial by Jury was a conspicuous achievement in human history for constitutionally establishing this unique mode of justice. The aristocrat Cleisthenes it is who must be credited with the creation of mankind’s first democracy in 508/7 B.C.E. He brought acknowledgement to the need to spread empowerment throughout society to promote equal justice, liberty, peace and prosperity, and devolved power all the way down to the poorest (male) citizens, the thetes, by recognising rights, exousia.
Exousia rights included the right to attend, debate and vote in the national assembly on laws and measures (referenda); the right of the accused to a Trial by Jury; and, crucially, the empowerment of citizens by bestowing on them judicial authority in Trial by Jury in which laws and measures passed by legislatorial majorities in the assembly could be judged, overruled and annulled * whenever this was deemed by the Jurors necessary to serve justice, liberty, and the interests of the people.
*See Works, vol. 2; by co-author of the U.S. Constitution Justice James Wilson.
Democracy created the illustrious Athens which successfully resisted the Persian invasions of 490 and 480/79 at the battles of Marathon and Salamis; that built the Parthenon; set enduring standards in art and architecture; developed sciences including those of medicine, mathematics and astronomy; that proffered a stage to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; and laid the foundations of Western rational and critical thought. Hellenic Greece of the Constitution of government by Trial by Jury received from the Athenians the defining epithet, Democracy.
The historical facts about Democracy in Hellenic Greece and everywhere else, are that it was a virile system and devotedly supported by the mass of just, civilised, peace and freedom-loving people. Democratic free Athens eventually only succumbed because of the mighty invasion of the Macedonian, Alexander the Great (conqueror), whose far-flung martial exploits set back the socio-political development of mankind.
Naturally, people have the moral responsibility, the right and the duty to resist and suppress injusticewherever it occurs, and by whomsoever it is perpetrated, governments notwithstanding. By definition and in practice, Democracy requires that the People at all times retain the Supreme Power to annul injustices and the bad laws made by fallible politicians.
This Power is uniquely embodied in the Citizen-Juror’s Duty in Trial by Jury: to judge the justice of every act of law enforcement, and to render the Not Guilty Verdict whenever conviction or punishment of the accused would be unfair, according to the juror’s conscience.
Legem terræ common law in which it is the jurors’ duty in the Trial by Jury Justice System to judge the justice of the law and the act of enforcement, and acquit any persons accused under an unjust or apocryphal statute or regulation, is thus superior to any statutes or regulations made by national or local governments.
Consider U.S. Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone on the Juror’s Duty, as follows:
"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant’s natural God-given unalienable or Constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.
"That juror must vote Not Guilty regardless of the pressures or abuses that may be heaped on him by any or all members of the jury with whom he may in good conscience disagree. He is voting on the justice of the law according to his own conscience and convictions and not someone else’s. The law itself is on trial quite as much as the case which is to be decided."
U.S. Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, 1941-1946.
(Emphases added.)
ETYMOLOGY
(linguistic derivation)
Hellenic Greek, Demokratia, Democracy.
demos, the people; kratos, sovereignty*, power; kratein, to rule.
*Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. See Democracy Defined Essay EIS#10, "We the People and the Matter of Words," downloadable for free from the Democracy Defined Campaign Material webpage.
Chambers Dictionary, etymology, demos, the people; kratein, to rule;
MSN Encarta. Democracy, demos, the people; kratein, to rule;
etc.
From the etymology comes the definition: Democracy, the form of government in which the Sovereign Supreme Power is vested in the Common People; the emancipation and ethos of society produced by the power of Juries of ordinary citizens in Trial by Jury, to vet, make, decide and enforce the law; the people rule.
In order to understand the meaning of the word, it is essential to know first that democracy embodies the people’s responsible control over government and law through the Trial by Jury. The people control the government, not the other way around. The people rule. This is democracy.
The power, right and duty of Jurors to decide the verdict according to their convictions and conscience has been established in common law since time immemorial, at least since the pre-historical incipience of "The Judgement of Equals" --- the Trial by Jury Justice System. This is because it is a definitive part of the Juror’s Duty to uphold Justice by protecting the ordinary people, the meek and innocent, from the crimes of lawlessness and injustice inflicted by those in positions of power. This protection against crime is a fundamental purpose of Trial by Jury, which is put into effect by the Juror pronouncing the Not Guilty Verdict to annul the enforcement of cruel or unjust laws, bad governance, the prejudices or incompetence of judges; and likewise by the cost-free private prosecutions (see below) by ordinary citizens in Trial by Jury of malefactors including those who acquire positions in government and abuse their power.
Later, England’s King Alfred, 871 - 899, upheld the established right and duty of jurors to find the verdict according to their judgement; see: The Illegal "Selection" of Jurors, Campaign Philosophy webpage Three.
Trial by Jury comprises a complete constitution of itself, providing legal control by the people of the modus operandi of government. (See Juror’s Duties, etc., which follow.)
Definitions. (i) A ‘constitution’ is a code of laws and customs established by the people of a nation (as distinct from government and/or bureaucrats) for the guidance and the legal and lawful control of its government, by which to preclude tyranny and lawlessness; a constitution may be amended only at the behest and by the active participation of the great mass of the people (not by government); and, ‘government’ is comprised of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Being the legal means of controlling and limiting the power of government, a constitution is categorically not merely a document showing the hierarchical administration and departmental organisation of government, though it may also contain this.
(ii) Tyranny is defined as oppressive rule administered with injustice; the cruel and arbitrary use of authority.
(iii) Legem terræ is the universal supreme secular law and morality. It is not constrained to any particular time, place or culture. The people’s legem terræ common law of the land is derived from natural law and Equity, the natural Sense of Fairness and conscience by which disinterested randomly-selected people in a jury situation judge; and from natural law and justice. Common law contains NO statutes of governments, nor rulings of judges. Legem terræ common law became the pan-European, and subsequently pan-Occidental phenomenon which prescribes and defines the Trial by Jury as its central tenet and sole justice system. Legem terræ common law is recognised and inscribed into Magna Carta at 1215, instituting the mechanisms of judicium parium suorum, the Trial by a Jury of social-equals (not by government or judges) to establish Equal Justice for all; and it forbids as crime all acts of injustice.
Note. Sane humans cannot avoid acquiring an understanding of fairness, equity and justice. From simple human interactions, children everywhere learn to sense injustice even before they learn the vocabulary by which to define or explain it.
DEMOCRACY IS INDEPENDENT OF POPULAR,
ELECTORAL OR LEGISLATORIAL VOTING.
Only in societies where Constitutional Trial by Jury holds sway is democracy extant.
Viz. The word ‘democracy’ is widely abused and ‘defined’ incorrectly: Democracy is a state of society realised neither by referenda (mass voting for new laws), nor by suffrage (electoral voting for representatives), nor by the representatives’ majorities’ legislative voting. Electoral voting, majority rule and ‘consensus politics’ neither create nor define democracy.
Democracy, that is, "the people rule through Trial by Jury," is independent of and ultimately governs all the activities of popular, electoral or legislatorial voting. The referendum can take place in a democracy, but, of course, it cannot create democracy. Democracy is only brought into being by Trial by Jury.
When these words are examined more closely than at the superficial first glance, the distinct semasiological attributes which establish the signification, for example, of the words ‘referendum’ and ‘democracy’, render them mutually opposed; reciprocally incompatible. In the context of voting in binding referenda, the word ‘direct’ destroys the entire meaning of the word democracy. It is semantically maladroit to adjoin one to the other in the glib hope that somehow this epithet could express a ‘democracy’ which would be achieved ‘directly’ by referenda.
Later, England’s King Alfred, 871 - 899, upheld the then already-established right and duty of jurors to find the verdict according to their judgement; and recognised and constitutionally established the non-judicial rôle of convenors, i.e., the judge, in Trial by Jury. (See section on The Illegal Selection of Jurors, Campaign Philosophy website Page Three.)
Common law is applicable in all times and places; it is not geographically constrained to a particular culture, religion or people, or limited to a set time or era. Very early well-known examples of common law derived from universal natural law are, "Thou shalt do no murder," and "Thou shall not steal." Common law is common in the sense that it is common to all mankind, people everywhere share it in common; it applies to everyone without exception: all are subject to it; and it is the duty of all people to recognise and uphold the supremacy of common law. Theists like to call natural law and justice "God’s Law."
Legem terræ Common Law comprises the true European Constitution derived and adopted by all the European Peoples.
Common Law, and its Trial by Jury Justice System, were feared and ruthlessly overruled by European dictators and are likewise being denied illegally by unthinking or despotic modern politicians.
In the attempt to mislead people away from the profound and powerful significance of the word democracy which is defined by and founded upon common law and the People’s Trial by Jury Courts, many perverted fictions of miseducation are foisted upon the population. This perfidy is the dismal work of publishers, editors, politicians in government, and other knowing and unwitting representatives of those behind-the-scenes oligarchs who seek to extinguish the illuminatory emancipation of the word and prefer that the population should not learn the true meaning. In pursuit of their self-interested antidemocratic goals, these villainous criminals go to the greatest lengths to prevent and deny the genuine Trial by Jury Justice System holding sway over society in general, and them in particular. Thus is explained the principal source of the degeneration of Democratic (Western) Civilisation, and the pernicious misinformation is in many writings, old and new, lexicons and ‘law dictionaries’.
Magna Carta, The Great Charter of English Liberties of 1215, is the exemplar, the paradigm of written constitutions. Magna Carta is comprised of legem terræ articles of the Supreme Common Law which governs all government personnel, including heads of state, and the entire population equally. The Great Charter Constitution’s valued precepts of justice are timeless and apply everywhere, in all times and places. It is for these reasons that Magna Carta is revered as a conspicuous historic landmark establishing the model tenets of human civilisation.
Articles of legem terræ* common law of the land prescribe and define the inimitable, democratic Trial by Jury Justice System; the rôle of Jurors; set the parameters limiting the rôle of judges and government within the justice system; and recognise and establish that all persons in government without exception are subject and liable to prosecution for infraction of strictures of the Constitutional common law.
* terræ is pronounced terry, the ‘æ’ as in Cæsar, seize.
These universal principles of morality and Equal Justice were also adopted by the U.S. Founding Fathers and framers of other Constitutions, who constitutionally adopted European and English Common Law Trial by Jury as the sole Justice System for all crimes (unimpeachable).
It is the implementation of the common law Trial by Jury through which "the people rule," which forms and defines democracy. Within the society which is democratic, the assembly (councils, congress, senate, parliament, etc.) remains of inferior authority to the decisions of juries in Trial by Jury.
In soviétique and parliamentary processes everywhere, assemblage embodies the initial, preliminary procedure of government, wherein proposal, debate and voting, frame measures and ‘enact’ laws. Trial by Jury is the decisive, superior stage: citizen-jurors are sovereign to judge the laws and causes in all their aspects, to decide whether, and if so, how, to give effect to their execution.
AN ETERNAL CRITERION OF JUSTICE.
All societies govern by their Justice System. The power to punish carries with it ALL power. It remains a universal eternal criterion of justice that the validity and justice of laws and all acts of their enforcement require to be judged not by those who make and enforce the laws (government), but by those who voluntarily agree to abide by the laws (all the adult citizens). All those who do not uphold this tenet are then promoting unlawful rule by a tyrannical élite. Unwittingly, or for self-advantage, they serve despots, abet tyranny, and are the criminal enemies of freedom and equal justice.
Because the fairness and justice of the laws and all acts of law enforcement require to be judged by those who agree to abide by the laws (not by those who make and enforce the laws), according to natural law, common law, constitutional law, and the paramount requirement for Equal Justice, the Common Law Trial by Jury of ordinary adult citizens in which the jurors judge the justice of the law is the only justice system which is legal and just everywhere, for all process of law, civil, criminal and fiscal.
That is why Common Law Trial by Jury is installed by all legitimate constitutions as the sole justice system for all crimes (unimpeachable), civil, criminal and fiscal.
The Juror is sovereign in Trial by Jury. Trial by Jury defines democracy, sine qua non. Within a Hellenic or modern democracy,
The Jury Comprises the Supreme Legislature and Judicature.
THIS CASE RULING EXEMPLIFIES DEMOCRACY AT WORK:
"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognise the undisputed power of the jury to acquit even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence."
"If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision."
United States v. Moylan; U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F. 2d 1002.
Neither in the United States, Britain, Eire, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, nor in all of Europe and elsewhere, have legislatures ever been invested by the People with authority to impair the powers, to change the oaths, or abridge the jurisdiction of jurors to govern government; nor to remove the universal Right of the accused to the Trial by Jury of peers for any charge or offence whatever, however serious or trivial.
Today, U.S. v Moylan is not exemplified by the modus operandi of courts. Democracy has been overturned by politicians and judiciary.
THE EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN.
The members of the legal profession who are Members of the Democracy Defined Restoration Campaign have learnt from this educational campaign and point out that the universally applicable legem terræ common law and the proper workings of its Trial by Jury Justice System have not been taught at law schools for a generation or more. The situation in regard to Equal Justice is still more degenerate in France, Germany and Continental Europe (EU).
Yet, the Common Law Trial by Jury is indispensable (and installed within Constitutions) not only to protect the people from common crimes by ascertaining guilt or innocence of the accused and where necessary apportioning retribution, but also, of transcendent importance, it is explicitly and precisely emplaced as a barrier to protect the vast mass of innocent citizenry from the crimes of arbitrary government, i.e., unjust laws, tyranny; and from the corruption, prejudices and incompetence of fallible judges. This is achieved by jurors judging on the justice of the law, and, by pronouncing the Not Guilty Verdict, annulling any law or act of enforcement which is deemed unfair or unjust to the accused, according to the juror’s conscience (i.e., sense of right and wrong).
The authentic Constitutional legem terræ Common Law Trial by Jury operates either
(i) as a means of cost-free private civil, criminal or fiscal prosecution to establish rights and punish or obtain redress for wrongs, or
(ii) as a right by which to establish a person’s innocence in defence from prosecution.
For a host of irrefutable legal and moral reasons (delineated herein), Trial by Jury is the only legal justice system for all causes (lawsuits) and due process of law, civil, criminal and fiscal. Hence, whenever Trial by Jury is denied, then the state or government which denies it commits the greatest Crime against Humanity. Whereas all injustices and wrongs from petty tyranny to genocidal holocaust may flow from denial of the genuine Trial by Jury, only from the society of Equal Justice can definitive democracy emerge.
Since its earliest inception in the mists of pre-historical antiquity, common law Trial by Jury has remained the civilised method of combating crime: both common crime, and high crimes committed by, or in the name of, government (that is, tyranny). Trial by Jury is the sole (peaceful) means known to mankind by which those who acquire and abuse power or government can be held responsible and brought to account.
If a citizen is unable to obtain Trial by Jury for either of the aforesaid purposes, that fact establishes the Illegality of the Status Quo. It then becomes the principal duty of every adult to restore legality to society by campaigning for Restoration and Universal Adoption of Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury.
The genuine Trial by Jury prescribed and defined by common law enables all sane adults to judge authoritatively what their laws and liberties are (by straightforward means explained below), so that the people retain all the liberties which they wish to enjoy. For these reasons, it is essential to know exactly how the common law provides mankind’s model justice system by which equal justice before the law is provided to all citizens. Common law provides that justice system, the Trial by Jury, which defines democracy and is definitively constitutional, by which the people responsibly control government (rather than the other way around).
RESTORATION... THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN.
Restoration of the constitutional common law governing Trial by Jury implements the citizens’ inherent, inalienable, eternal rights to liberty and justice, as follows:
Firstly, to the right to a (genuine) Trial by Jury in defence; and...
...in Common Law Trial by Jury, the jury operates on the presumption of innocence and is called upon to review the evidence presented by the plaintiff, which the accused may refute.
Defence likewise may present exonerative evidence and, furthermore, instigate a Counter Plaint or charge, presenting the evidence for the jury’s consideration as to whether aspects of the law render its enforcement invalid or unjust; that the prosecution is malicious or frivolous, which wastes the jurors’ (the court’s) time and constitutes a crime, per se.
So, the defence may be simultaneously suing the prosecution for damages, and instigating a criminal trial of the plaintiff. The jury is emplaced to try (judge) the causes concurrently. By this means, the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System discourages or pre-empts malicious private or government prosecutions; and moreover, genuine Trial by Jury swiftly leads to the expunction of inequitable (unjust), bad, arbitrary or unwanted legislation and vexatious regulations.
Secondly, the ordinary citizen’s right to place the evidence in a cost-free arraignment of wrongdoer/s (regardless of the ‘importance’ or position of the accused) in front of fellow citizen-jurors in a Trial by Jury. No one is ‘above’ the common law of the land. No one is ‘immune’.
It is the job of elected representatives to administer the country in a way that does not disadvantage any of its people. Humans err. The purpose of the Trial by Jury is to protect the people from crime; that is, both from common crime and the government crimes which otherwise take place with impunity as a result of the human fallibilities of politicians and the judiciary. It is the absolute duty of the common law juror to annul legislation whenever it reflects the slightest self-interest of a partisan group.
Whereas most people would prefer to pursue other occupations, in a democracy the representatives’ (congressmen and women, MPs, etc.) duty is to take care of the uncontroversial nuts and bolts of day-to-day administration of a society. Categorically, they are not there to promote partisan interests. That activity constitutes crime per se. The common law Trial by Jury exists to bring such corrupt administrators to account. There is no statutory congressional/ parliamentary or judicial ‘immunity’ for those perpetrating venal or unjust activities, whatever their high place in society. That is, there is no immunity for anyone involved in the commission of criminal acts. Everyone is answerable to the tenets of legem terræ, the common law. (terræ is pronounced terry, the æ as in Cæsar; seize.)
THE CITIZENS’ PRIVATE PROSECUTIONS.
Trial by Jury is too often thought of by people only as a situation wherein the accused defends him or herself, usually from the government’s prosecution. As distinguished from the despot’s charade which takes the place of Trial by Jury in the courtroom today, the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury is much more than that. Real Trial by Jury is a supreme weapon in the hands of the people, enabling them peacefully to foil would-be tyrants, and to obliterate crime-engendering inherently illegal laws and legislatorial majorities’ self-interested, venal legislation. (Viz., the timeless, universal legem terræ common law inscribed into Magna Carta, Article 61, below.)
Private prosecution methodologically achieves the expunction of arbitrary, illegal laws in the following way:
Plaintiff(s)’ direct private prosecution in a petit Trial by Jury precludes the (alternative) process of the Grand Jury.
NOTE. Following their review of evidence presented to them, when Grand Juries determine an indictable offence has been committed, the government prosecution service undertakes to prosecute the case in a Trial by Jury. However, this would be unsatisfactory in an instance where evidence is presented as to criminal machinations by government politicians, bureaucrats and judges. It would be preposterous to ask or expect government personnel and employees to prosecute their masters (that is, their employers) and colleagues effectively. This would not only be unrealistic, but also wholly inadequate to the needs of a population seeking to protect itself from tyrannical misgovernment and politicans’ corrupt legislation, as is judicably enforced by today’s ‘judges’. Hence, in this cause, not the grand jury, but only the private prosecution in Trial by Jury serves the needs of justice.
A principle of legem terræ, the universal common law, is that no judgement (cf. sentence) can be valid against a party’s goods or person, including a judgement for costs, unless it be a judgement rendered by a jury following the common law Trial by Jury.
Where the randomly-selected jury finds unanimously that a frivolous or malicious charge has been brought, the plaintiff(s) are liable for costs and damages. Such a prospect discourages or eliminates unjustifiable prosecutions. However, where multiple or numerous citizens unite together as co-plaintiffs in the same prosecution, this has the effect of establishing that their grievance is genuine and that the action taken by them of bringing racketeering members of the government to trial embodies their fulfilment of a conscientious public obligation or duty. This precludes unanimous judgements by juries against the plaintiffs for costs, though this does not necessarily establish the guilt of the nominated defendant/s.
In a single or a succession of Trial(s) by Jury throughout the land, the presenting of evidence establishing the collusion of politicians and government bureaucrats in premeditated criminal acts under the guise of the framing and passing of specified ‘legislation’ which the jury finds to be: criminogenic (crime-producing and thus inherently illegal); and/or inequitable; partial; partisan; or venal; or in any way un-Constitutional or against the public interest, renders void that legislation and removes from public office those found guilty of the behaviour. Those persons who have suffered persecution under such unfounded ‘laws’ qualify for Amnesty and compensatory Restitution (as for other Wrongful Prosecution).
As ever, the degree of guilt (malice aforethought; mens rea) discerned by the jurors in the criminality of the accused goes towards the determining by the jury of their sentence. (Self-evidently, government personnel may not judge in their own cause and hence are automatically deprived of any privilege or power to moderate such sentences or to pardon.) Defendants are entitled to appeal against conviction or sentence and for re-Trial by a new Jury.
In this way, through the Trial by Jury the people at large peacefully protect themselves from despotism, villainy and potential holocaust. They re-establish the due primacy of the universal natural and common law and justice over statute law; punish and deter crime; resume their rightful responsible rôle to police their society; nurture the values of equal justice and respect for the rights of others; fulfil the purpose of Trial by Jury to eliminate crime; and they uphold the Constitution. The duplicitous legislation by which wealth and/or hegemony accrues to particular preferred people or segments of society is thus rapidly and permanently extirpated.
The consummation of the purpose of Trial by Jury (described above) constitutes a reason explaining why judges and politicians are active in denying and destroying Constitutional Trial by Jury: the criminally corrupt reveal themselves as such by their very antithesis to Trial by Jury.
When the fact of all the people having equal and ultimate control over the enforcement of laws in the Trial by Jury is a firmly established social reality, it makes the passing of tyrannical legislation by national assemblies a fruitless exercise predestined to failure. Tyranny is nipped in the bud.
The immediate result of Restoration of the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System would be the curtailment of politicians’ and their beholden servitors, the judges’, undue powers, and the thorough reversal of their pernicious acts by which World Civilisation is currently being discreetly dismantled to establish the few select bank-owners’ supreme dictatorship through their ‘one world government’; the ‘new world order’.
With Trial by Jury holding sway, laws count for naught unless they be just. Thus, the People are served, not ruled, by governments. Such government then cannot but embody truly democratic ideals and civilised aspirations. This type of government attracts, and is comprised of, people representing the citizens’ interests; and oppressing none; and no tyrant can attain power. Such is democracy.
At the behest of juries of ordinary citizens, the state is constrained into enforcing only just principles and democratic attitudes which accord with the People’s judgement in Trials by Jury, such as those reflecting common law values: fraternity, liberty, egalitarianism, progress and justice.
By the diligent upholding of this Constitution, all tyranny is pre-empted. Not only are bureaucratic and fiscal injustices eliminated, but tyrants, great and petty, are emasculated. This enforceable democratic control by the People was constitutionally emplaced to extend equally over the historic and current ‘religious’ tyrannies, as to secular, which are suffered under man’s inhumanity to man.
Thus, Constitutional Democracies founded on the Common Law Trial by Jury respond to, but cannot initiate, aggression, including wars so-defined. If Trial by Jury had remained operating throughout the European nations, whence it originated, the Hohenzollern, Hitler and Stalin tyrannies would have been truncated, and the Holocaust and both World Wars averted.
MANKIND’S MODEL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
All people are subject to and bound by the law of the land, including executive, legislature, and the judiciary. The Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System intentionally takes a person out of the government’s hands (i.e., from judges, prosecutors, police and prison service) and places the accused under the protection of his or her equals and the people’s Common Law of the land alone: Trial by Jury allows no man or woman to be punished unless the indiscriminately chosen equals of the accused (i.e., the jurors) consent to it.
Common law derives from people’s sense of natural law and justice (fairness; equity); the precept universally understood as "do unto others as you would they do unto you."
Subsequently, the Trial by Jury was adopted by the Roman Republic along with much high culture from the Hellenes. The Romans spread Trial by Jury to their far-flung domains.
TRIAL BY JURY IS THE TRUE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION.
It is a fact that at one time throughout Europe, all shared, and the People rigorously defended from government interference, their unique legem terræ common law constitutional Justice System. Wars, tyrannical monarchs, revolutionaries, and dictatorial rulers imposing codes, constant political change; alternating adoption, modification and rejection of diverse social theories; fascism, Marxism, socialism, communism; all have wreaked upheaval and left Europe’s nations with a variety of constitutional arrangements. Within the Continent of Europe and to a great extent within modern Britain, the collective awareness that all Europeans once universally shared a constitutional ideal, has been eroded by premeditated historio-political miseducation (political propaganda; indoctrination).
In order that democratic Trial by Jury (i.e., "trial per pais" or "by the people of the country," rather than trial by government judge) could take place everywhere throughout extensive territories and large countries, the people’s common law (not government) in practice refined juries from mass juries to petit juries (generally of twelve or fifteen) requiring unanimity to pronounce guilt, indiscriminately chosen by lot (reflecting all views in society and protecting minorities).
Ref. constitutional instalment by King Alfred the Great (constitutional lawgiver), 871-899 C.E., of common law governing petit juries, indiscriminately chosen jurors, & the Principle of Unanimity. See Democracy Defined Essay EIS#11: “Specific Aspects of Magna Carta: The Constitution,” freely downloadable from the Campaign Material Page.
Trial by Jury continued within Europe. In England, after the departure of the Roman legions in 407,"judicium parium suorum," also known as the Trial by Jury, was recognised as the sole justice system for all causes (suits-at-law), civil, criminal and fiscal, by the world’s most revered and famous written constitution: Magna Carta, the Great Charter of English Liberties, in 1215.
NOTE. "per judicium parium suorum" translates as "according to the judgement of his equals." The Trial by Jury is also known as "the judgement of pares" or "peers." The words ‘pares’ and ‘parium’ mean ‘equals’, i.e., social-equals. The words parium, pares or peers meaning ‘equals’ should not be confused with the later English word ‘peer’ meaning ‘lord’ or ‘titled person’. Peer from Latin ‘parium’ means ‘equal’ as it does, for example, in the word ‘peerless’ meaning ‘matchless’ or ‘without equal’.
Significantly, Conrad, Emperor of Germany, had also installed Trial by Jury two centuries before Magna Carta.
From beyond the Urals to the Atlantic, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, the Trial by Jury was adopted throughout all the nations of Europe, and subsequently by the (post) colonial nations. Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury is the true pan-European and pan-Occidental Constitution and Justice System.
"Among the Gothic nations of modern Europe, the custom of deciding lawsuits by a jury seems to have prevailed universally." See Millar’s second volume of The Historical View of English Government, p. 296; & vol. 2, Palgrave’s Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth; pp. 147-8, etc.
Trial by Jury then came to the New World. As shown by the U.S. Constitution’s co-author, Justice James Wilson, this history was known to the Founding Fathers (see Works, Vol. 2). The Founders constitutionally installed the Trial by Jury for all crimes civil, criminal and fiscal (other than those which are impeachable).
Trial by Jury is the mechanism which consummates the etymology, i.e., the linguistic derivation, of the word democracy. The Trial by Jury is the ONLY (peaceful) means known to mankind by which the Sovereign Supreme Power can be retained and responsibly lodged in the hands of ALL the people. Wheresoever Trial by Jury is emplaced and operating replicates the creation of democracy. By definition, the republic or constitutional (or symbolic) monarchy which institutes the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System is a democracy.
Regarding ‘divisibility’ of sovereignty: If the elected body imposes any law or regulation which is inconsistent with the People’s sense of justice and fairness, it requires annulment by jurors in Trial by Jury, even by a single juror (unanimity required), who may be part of a minority race or group unfairly discriminated against by the law. In this manner, through the Trial by Jury, sovereignty not only resides with the people as a collective whole, but importantly, it is also embodied ‘divisibly’ with every adult citizen. Trial by Jury is thereby the active principle of democracy: the people rule.
Trial by Jury is mankind’s model justice system and it is the definitive Foundation of Civilisation, sine qua non. That is to say, adoption of democratic Trial by Jury differentiates civilisation from the barbarity of despotism. Whether a society is a monarchy, a theocracy or a republic, what converts it from a despotism (a tyrannical, uncivilised state) to a democracy (the civilised state with Trial by Jury operating) is the instalment and implementation of the Trial by Jury through which the people rule. Application where fitting of the word democracy defines the theocracy as a democratic theocracy; or a republic as a democratic republic, i.e., a democracy, as opposed to a despotic republic such as Communist China which denies the people’s right to the common law Trial by Jury Justice System. (The word democracy does not replace the word republic. Of course, the republic remains a republic.)
THE CAUSE FOR ALL HUMANITY.
Because of the etymological foundation, there are semasiological limits as to how the word democracy can be (correctly) utilised. Demos-kratein, demokratia, democracy, the word, with its unique historic derivation, has the strict parameters of meaning: "government by the People with ultimate sovereign authority invested in the citizen-juror in common law Trial by Jury." In the absence of education of citizens, and especially the Jurors as to their definitive duties in Trial by Jury (see Jurors’ Duties) and their sworn commitment to undertake them, the genuine Trial by Jury could not be expected to take place; and hence, democracy itself would be overturned.
Despite this unequivocal definition of democracy, and relying on the general insouciance of the people, not to say, widespread ignorance, the enemies of democracy attempt to miseducate the people en masse by introducing self-contradictory, extraneous and stridently incorrect uses of the word; viz. Wikipedia’s and the latest dictionaries’ contributors’ gibberish. In this way, they hope to increase their dominion over the mentality of the population, and destroy all concept and memory of mankind’s model justice system; the only one which bestows equal justice and liberty upon all.
Fortunately, there are those (some too, within the courts and law enforcement) who strive to re-establish democracy with its Trial by Jury. This cause for all humanity is ultimately irresistible.
If the power to govern resides in the hands of less than all the people, then an oligarchy or despotism rules. Hence, constitutional instalment and practical implementation of common law Trial by Jury by which ordinary people have the power to overrule and nullify government politicians’ and judges’ acts of injustice, are indispensable not only to the creation and definition of democracy, but also as the criteria by which the legitimacy of government is measured.
"Majoritarian government" or, more accurately put, rule by a minority, a small percentage of the total population, is the unavoidable outcome of government produced by electors’ voting, i.e., suffrage. Electoral voting can never expect to produce representation, equal protection of and justice for all the people: demos, the people.
It is a straightforward verity confirmed by all history and present-day circumstances, that without the democratic Trial by Jury in full operation for all causes (lawsuits) civil, criminal and fiscal, despotism becomes inevitable, with strife, misery and injustice on a massive scale being the lot of the greater part of the population.
Democracy is subtler than many people have been led to believe. It is, however, a phenomenon which every sane teen and adult can be educated to understand and encouraged to promulgate.
WORDS.
Words (must) have distinct significations and we have no choice but to respect the etymology if we intend to communicate meaningfully with each other.
When the word democracy is properly understood, the contradictions-in-terms (meaningless distortions of language) become self-evident if adjectives such as "direct" or "representative" precede the word. These latter seek to confound, undermine and pervert the real meaning of democracy because, again, they incorrectly allude to statute law derived from government-by-majorities, including referenda and voting in assemblies.
These vacuous terms deliberately obscure the vital semantical point: democracy is founded on the Common Law Trial by Jury, the justice system in which the citizen-juror is sovereign, has all judicial authority, and jurors have the duty to annul enforcement of bad laws, tyranny and acts of injustice.
What goes on in referenda and the national assemblies has nothing whatsoever to do with Trial by Jury, and this latter is the basis of democracy through which the people rule, and hold in their own keeping all the rights and liberties which they wish to enjoy.
Indeed, through the Trial by Jury, democracy is the very system which precludes ochlocracy, i.e., direct rule by mobs, whether of brutish, self-interested minorities or majorities. Democracy protects minorities from wilful majorities prevailing over them. Likewise, democracy does not allow the idea that "rule" by a minority can ever be ‘legitimate’.
In both cases, majority or minority rule, regardless of the actual percentages, what is described is one segment of the population, an élite, "ruling" over the rest, a ruled, suppressed underclass. Those scenarios both describe an oligarchical governance which, by its nature, must trend towards partiality and injustice. That is the reality which besets the people of the World today, and this is the situation which democracy was brought into being to preclude.
SOME ANTIDEMOCRATIC PITFALLS OF VOTING:
Referendum and Congress.
The Athenians knew all about the virtues of people’s voluntary involvement, en masse. Such activity is conducive to harmony and unity, but realistically-speaking, it is only healthy within that society wherein the common people have the power in Trial by Jury to comprise the Supreme Legislature and annul injustices which may be imposed. That is to say, it is only in Trial by Jury that the constitutional basis of authority resides in democracy, Hellenic, and everywhere else in place and time.
Democracy does not operate on ‘popularity’ or power of the majority, by referenda or in congress. Quite the opposite, democracy prevails on behalf of minorities and even of individuals, in establishing equal justice for ALL the people, demos, the people; not for only some.
Moreover, it is far from correct to conceive of ‘democracy’ as only a society of "a small number of citizens who assemble and administer the government in person," for neither in Hellenic Greece nor in any other democracy is the assembly the supreme judge and final arbiter of law: that is the exclusive domain of the JURY.
Certainly, latterday technology can bring the referendum technique to virtually all the population. However, this was NOT the activity by which demokratia, democracy, was achieved, secured and defined in Athens or anywhere else. Far from it.
Explained by its etymology, history and signification, democracy can be paraphrased as "rule by the people through the Trial by Jury Justice System." Yet, by contrast, when the referendum is binding on the society, then the referendum "rules;" the results become statute law; and those who resist or fall foul of the measure are scourged under the full force of the criminal ‘justice’ system. Those who understand the meaning of the word democracy, see how in every case these dismal facts apply. The binding referendum not only breaches the terms by which democracy is defined, it is in dire CONFLICT with all the adherents of the democratic system. Hence, government-by-referendum cannot be ‘democracy’ by direct means.
FURTHER ANTITHESES:
MEANING AND FUNCTION.
A ‘referendum’ is not a system for establishing justice; whereas democracy is the very embodiment of a system of the people’s, for the people, which is fully preoccupied with ensuring liberty and equal justice for all.
The results of government-by-referendum within a state bereft of Trial by Jury can yield up the worst imaginable injustices of which our species is capable. For example, the extreme ballot-box popularity of the National Socialist (NAZI) Party through the ’Thirties had the effect of ‘referenda’ or plebiscite, from which the Party claimed a ‘mandate’ for their barbaric acts of tyranny.
In the lead-up to a referendum, and indeed within the assembly, people can be charmed, cajoled, or terrified into voting for a given measure. Majorities can overwhelmingly endorse a party’s program, albeit one of lethal race laws; or of complicity in promoting an agenda biased in favour of particular elements of society against the legitimate interests of others; or the imposition of grotesque rule by the fanatics of a particular religion (to exemplify but three of the countless illegitimate antidemocratic ‘laws’ under which humanity constantly suffers).
Today, constitutional democracy is mankind’s model society which installs legem terræ, the common law of the land of which the central tenet and sole justice system is the Trial by Jury prescribed and defined by Magna Carta, "judicium parium suorum," the judgement of equals explicitly emplaced as the mechanism for protecting the population from all tyrannical inclinations of government maladministration.
Democracy thereby bestows equal justice on behalf of all the people; empowers ordinary people peacefully to maintain their rights and liberties for themselves; and removes from majorities, minorities, judges and politicians any power to forestall the democratic society, whether in a republic or a constitutional monarchy.
In real Trial by Jury, the validity, worth, justice and legality of a law may be challenged. A law’s effects, dangers, a possible venal character, and even the potential mens rea (malicious motives) behind the referendum or the assemblies’ lawmakers themselves, may be exposed.
When such circumstances are pertinent to the defence of those who break, resist or refuse to submit to the law, then, alerting jurors to their duty to annul bad laws and unjust prosecutions, counsel and defendant induce the jury to dispassionate deliberations on the evidence, facts, moral intentions, the purpose and fairness of the law, and of its enforcement.
Further protection is afforded by Trial by Jury against factions, the tyrant and demagogue by common law processes, such as the care with which all views amongst the population are reflected within juries, byrandom selection of jurors.
The referendum on the other hand, when installed as the means of rule, of governing, in which majorities have power to please themselves at the expense of minorities, is a horror which strikes fear and fury within the breast of every sane adult and true democrat [not party-political].
Government-by-referendum is as atrocious as government-by-majorities in the legislature, whenever these functions are unrestrained because of an absence of Constitutional Trial by Jury.
FOR EXAMPLE !
For example, the Spaniards have lost all memory of democracy and their former Gothic heritage of Common Law Trial by Jury. They were deceived by their unscrupulous politicians who praised the numerous social benefits listed in the so-called European Constitution, without sufficiently alerting them to the fact that all the terms of the ‘constitution’ are not guaranteed; they do not control and bind the governing bodies in the slightest. Some ‘constitution’!
On the contrary, the terms are actually changeable at any time at the whim of the unelected commissioners (commissars) of the Supreme Soviet (council) System: citizens are utterly at the mercy of the inquisitorial methods of trial-by-judge, which denies habeas corpus (freedom from arbitrary detention); freedom from arbitrary arrest (without probable cause); and Trial by Jury.
Ipso facto, the ‘European Treaty-Constitution’* is NOT a constitution; it is literally a charter of mass enslavement to the power of, or behind, the state.
*Definition-in-brief: a constitution is a binding code for the guidance and control of government, changeable only by the active participation of the great mass of the people.
The Spanish decision overruled a significant proportion of the population, which, when added to the large number who did not vote (to adopt it), was the real majority. Thus was the execrable result of government-by-referendum.
MISNOMER.
Democracy, the constitution of government by Trial by Jury, was itself the Athenians’ constitutional means of superseding and curtailing a state of government-by-referendum, from the voting in the assembly in which all could take part. Hence, again, it is seen that applying to democracy the adjective ‘direct’ in the context of referenda, is a linguistic mutilation. The attachment results, not in a meaningful nomenclature, but in a hideous self-contradictory misnomer. Instead of a useful term being coined, it represents reductio ad absurdam.
The crass, self-destructive and/or ulterior schemes of man are legion. By the juxtapositioning of words, fallacious ‘terminology’ is fabricated which destroys the meaning and marvel that is democracy.
All these vacuous terms following, deliberately obscure the vital semantical point: democracy is founded on the Common Law Trial by Jury, the justice system in which the citizen-juror is sovereign, has all judicial authority, and jurors have the duty to annul enforcement of bad laws, tyranny and acts of injustice. (This list does not presume to be comprehensive.) Beware the following:
‘anticipatory’; ‘Christian’; ‘consensus’; ‘deliberative’; ‘direct’; ‘grassroots’; ‘illiberal’; ‘Islamic’; ‘liberal’; ‘Messianic’; ‘non-partisan’; ‘participatory’; ‘religious’; ‘representative’; ‘republican’; ‘social’; ‘Soviet’; and the ultimate in ludicrousness: ‘totalitarian’ democracy !
The nonsensical idea of ‘adding an adjective’ forms an expression of linguistic confusion which has been cooked-up by a person or persons wholly unaware of (or intentionally to conceal) the definitive aspect of Trial by Jury as forming the foundation of democracy.
The Juror’s Judgement.
Citizen-Juries educated and instructed to judge on the justice of law and its enforcement, can be relied upon to protect people from the state (i.e., the government), when the state breaches correct behaviour in attempting to enforce injustices. It is for this reason that those who stand to gain money and/or power from tyranny by the imposition of unjust ‘laws’, regard the genuine Trial by Jury as an obstacle to be undermined and destroyed. Untrustworthy at best, of outright criminal intent at worst, are those who, instead of restoring Common Law Trial by Jury to its true form and ascendance of power, would discard it altogether.
The Unconscionable, Inhuman Tool of Despots.
In abject abetment of tyranny, some people take their orders for pay and careers without ever allowing themselves to pause for thought and take account of the consequences to others of their serving the despots of those governments which deny or subvert the democratic Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System. Such unconscionable and judicable* villains could not be expected truthfully to promulgate the correct depiction of democracy. Many of these people (paid for by the citizens’ taxes) would even deny knowing anything about, or understanding, the mechanisms by which Trial by Jury is supposed to protect the people from tyranny, and Trial by Jury’s definitive relationship with democracy. For the record, therefore, let us see how democracy "works."
* Definition. judicable, that which may be tried by jury in a court of law.
Enforcement of injustice by state personnel is an illegal punishable act: cf. Crime Against Humanity; applicable, ratified U.N. Principles, 12-10-1946; International law; The Nuremberg Precedent, etc. All those persons involved in framing, maintaining and/or enforcing any tyrannical legislation are judicably accountable.
See Campaign Philosophy Page Two.
WE THE PEOPLE… (demos; the people)
The Legal Criteria of Constitutional Democracy.
As noted, all societies govern by their Justice System: the power to punish carries with it ALL power. If at any time, albeit for an instant, the Supreme Power is removed from or ceded by the people, and the power is acquired by, or delegated to, a group consisting of LESS than all the People, then the democratic state has ceased to exist: an undemocratic government, that is, a despotism, has assumed its place.
It was explicitly to counteract arbitrary, corrupt tyrannical government that the protections of Magna Carta installed the (pan-) European people’s common law of the land criteria of constitutional democracy "in perpetuity" and "for ever." See Preamble & Article 63. These criteria, which were also constitutionally adopted by the Founding Fathers, have been the foundation of compassionate democratic civilisation through the tribulations of a long varied history. As has repeatedly occurred in the past, instead of upholding them, present-day criminal ‘politicians’ now intend their destruction.
This "law of the land" is now called common law. See Essay EIS#9; "LEGEM TERRÆ."
These democratic protections are as follows:
(i) the citizen’s right to a Trial by a Jury of peers (i.e., social-equals, not trial by government or its employees);
(ii) the right and duty of the Juror to judge on the justice of the law and its enforcement in finding the Verdict in Trial by Jury (i.e., Annulment-by-Jury or Jury Nullification);
(iii) freedom from arbitrary arrest (i.e., without probable cause);
(iv) freedom from arbitrary detention (later known as Habeas Corpus);
(v) equality before the law.
THE COMMON LAW IS LEGEM TERRÆ (THE LAW OF THE LAND)
AND VICE VERSA.
Natural law, justice and equity are eternal and universal; not geographically constrained nor limited to a set time. Common Law derives from natural law. It serves to protect all the individual persons equally. (If a measure does not do this, it is not common law.) Common law is essential to the survival of civilised values. Although individuals comprising governments can judicably abuse and infract common law, by definition and in practice, it cannot legally be ‘changed’ or ‘superseded’ by politicians, statute law or governments.
Trial by Jury is the central tenet and sole justice system of legem terræ, "the law of the land," the European People’s fundamental code, Constitution and law as inscribed into Magna Carta. See Article 39.
The common law comprising the true European Constitution and pan-Occidental Constitution prescribes that for any charge or offence, however serious or trivial, no person shall be dispossessed, fined, punished or in any way disadvantaged, except according to the lawful judgement or sentence of a unanimous jury of jurors randomly chosen according to common law principles, of his or her social-equals in the Trial by Jury. According to universal common law, the Trial by Jury is the only system which is legal for all process of law, civil, criminal and fiscal.
That is to say, government only has the power to act against a person, his property or liberties by the authority of, and according to the lawful sentence of a common law jury following a legal Trial by Jury.
The genuine common law must be differentiated from that which modern government has corruptedby legislation; a counterfeit which is "common law" in name only:
Common law does not include any statutes made by government nor decisions made by judges.
See TRIAL BY JURY: Its History, True Purpose and Modern Relevance ISBN 9781902848723.
Also see Democracy Defined Essay EIS#9: "LEGEM TERRÆ."
Also see the constitutional, historical and law texts of Blackstone, Crabbe, Palgrave, Coke, Gilbert, Hume, Hallam, Stewart, Hale, et al.
Common law is emphatically neither "government-made" nor "judge-made." Quite the contrary: it is exclusively the product of the sense of fairness, natural law and justice of the ordinary people. Modern usurpation notwithstanding, common law does not consist of case precedents (stare decisis), for juries decide the law, which includes the sentence, in each individual case. Nor is it comprised of judicial rulings, decisions or interpretations of statutes.
Common law does not ever or in any way come from government judges. Indeed, common law is the antithesis (the ‘opposite’) of judge-made law, and it is supposed to free all the people equally from the shackles of arbitrary government and their bidden employees. Common law is the law of all the people: it forms the Supreme Law which binds government and legally controls the government’s modus operandi. In recognition of this latter fact, the Common Law Trial by Jury is inserted into the Constitution as the sole justice system for all crimes (infractions of laws and regulations), civil, criminal and fiscal.
Having established what common law is, one must note the extent to which the term common law has been abused. It is an opprobrium to misinform people that "common law" is a product of judges, stare decisis, and government courts. Worse though: it is utterly wrong to allow government to rob the people of their true common law and its power of emancipation.
It is unconstitutional to amend in effect The Constitution’s installation of the common law Trial by Jury Justice System by co-opting the common law by legislation into a body of law legislated by congress or parliament, or made by judges. For this has been the illegal means of burying common law and the authentic Trial by Jury, to enable government to obliterate the People’s ability (peacefully) to protect their liberties for themselves. It moreover supplants the model justice system of Trial by Jury with the flawed, one-sided, inherently illegal despotic system of trial-by-judge.
REFERENCES CONFIRMING WHAT COMMON LAW IS.
Here are some references confirming the common law is legem terræ and vice versa.
Sir Matthew Hale: "The common law is sometimes called, by way of eminence, lex terræ, as in the statute of Magna Carta, chap. 29, where certainly the common law is principally intended by those words, aut per legem terræ; as appears by the exposition thereof in several subsequent statutes; and particularly in the statute of 28 Edward III, chap. 3, which is but an exposition and explanation of that statute. Sometimes it is called lex Angliæ, as in the statute of Merton, cap. 9, Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari,' etc. (We will that the laws of England be not changed.) Sometimes it is called lex et consuetudo regni (the law and custom of the kingdom); as in all commissions of oyer and terminer; and in the statutes of 18 Edward I, and de quo warranto, and divers others. But most commonly it is called the Common Law, or the Common Law of England; as in the statute Articuli super Chartas, chap. 15, in the statute 25 Edward III, chap. 5 (4) and infinite more records and statutes."
1 Hale’s History of the Common Law, p. 128.
Crabbe: "It is admitted, on all hands, that it (Magna Carta) contains nothing but what was confirmatory of the common law, and the ancient usages of the realm, and is, properly speaking, only an enlargement of the charter of Henry I, and his successors."
Crabbe’s History of the English Law, p. 127.
Blackstone: "It is agreed by all our historians that the Great Charter of King John was, for the most part, compiled from the ancient customs of the realm, or the laws of Edward the Confessor; by which they mean the old common law, which was established under our Saxon princes."
Blackstone’s Introduction to the (Great) Charters; Blackstone’s Law Tracts, p. 289.
Coke (a High Court judge): "The common law is the most general and ancient law of the realm. The common law appeareth in the statute of Magna Carta, and other ancient statutes (which for the most part are affirmations of the common law) in the original writs, in judicial records, and in our books of terms and years."
1 Coke’s Institutes, p. 115.
Coke: "It (Magna Carta) was for the most part declaratory of the principal grounds of the fundamental laws of England. They (Magna Carta and Carta de Foresta) were, for the most part, but declarations of the ancient common laws of England, to the observation and keeping whereof the king was bound and sworn."
Preface to 2 Coke’s Institutes, p. 3.
Nota Bene: To judge the law, i.e., its fairness, validity, applicability, and legal meaning (interpretation), the Jurors are the sole legal judges prescribed by constitution and common law. For example, see the following from Gilbert:
"This position" (that the matter of law was decided by the justices [judges], but the matter of fact by the pares [peers, i.e., jurors]) "is wholly incompatible with the common law, for the Jurata [jury] were the sole judges both of the law and the fact."
Gilbert’s History of the Common Pleas, note, p. 70; and
"The Annotist says, that this [i.e., whether jurors reflect upon the question of law] is indeed a maxim in the Civil-Law Jurisprudence, but it does not bind an English jury, for by the common law of the land the jury are judges as well as the matter of law, as of the fact, with this difference only, that the judge on the bench is to give them no assistance in determining the matter of fact, but if they have any doubt among themselves relating to matter of law, they may then request him to explain it to them, which when he hath done, and they are thus become well informed, they, and they only, become competent judges of the matter of law. And this is the province of the judge on the bench, namely, to show, or teach the law, but not to take upon him the trial of the delinquent, either in matter of fact or in matter of law."
Gilbert’s History of the Common Pleas, p. 57.
Laws which are plainly just require little debate or explanation. Until a written law is thus evidently and plainly just it merits no place in the statute book: its prosecution requires Annulment-by-Jury; its expunction from the roll of legislation is mandated by juries’ rejection of its enforcement.
Advice may be requested by the jurors from the convenor (nowadays misnamed ‘judge’) who need not be qualified in the law to perform the functions of convenor because, according to common law, if explanation of a law is ever required, or its justice or validity and hence its very legality is disputed, both the plaintiff and the accused and their counsel, and amicus curiæ (Latin for ‘a friend to the court’; an impartial adviser not a party to the case) may render such explication as the jury deems necessary. Jurors may observe or reject advice about the law as they consider appropriate and decide the verdict according to their individual conscience (i.e., sense of fairness, right and wrong).
NATURAL AND COMMON LAW GOVERN
ALL STATUTES AND WRITTEN LAWS:
Profound differences exist between natural law, common law, constitutional law -- and statute law.
Legem terræ common law derives from natural law, the universal supreme secular morality which exists in all times and places independently of, and superior to, statutes (i.e., legislatorial majorities’ and governments’ written laws). Legem terræ common law is comprised of the eternal, universally recognised tenets of justice which underpin civilisation. (As mentioned, theists like to call natural law "God’s Law.")
Legem terræ common law is based on mankind’s natural understanding of the universal Sense of Fairness (equity) which all sane adults share in common: that people should "do unto others as you would they do unto you." From early childhood all people, literate or not, know it when injustices are committed against them and they know likewise when they commit injustices to others. (Innocent or accidental acts which cause damage are treated of by civil law suits and Trial by Jury apportions appropriate compensation.)
However, when the act is premeditated and hence malicious (malice aforethought; mens rea), common law defines this as Crime, be it of a lesser or greater degree, and ‘Guilt’ is definitively inherent in the act.
The superiority of natural law is witnessed and confirmed by the fact that the written laws must be interpreted by the natural. Because natural law and the Sense of Fairness are reliable and universal, the judiciary is governed by the rule that, for the interpretation and determining the meaning of the words comprising a written law, the language of statutes and constitutions shall be as closely as possible construed consistently with natural law.
See explanation of Natural Law and Justice and Common Law, pp. 195 - 197, THE REPORT by Kenn d’Oudney and Joanna d’Oudney, ISBN 9781902848204; Foreword by a Nobel laureate former Official Adviser to the U.S. government; endorsed by a Professor Fellow of the Royal Society, academics, doctors (of jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, homeopathy, etc.) and judges (U.S. & U.K.).
Common law is constitutional; that is, common law operates to protect people from crime and injustices of all types, including those committed against citizens through unjust legislation, or by corrupt acts by politicians and judges in government. (Government is comprised of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.)
Legem terræ common law embodies the universally accepted supreme secular morality which treats of and attempts to deter Crime (an act of injustice committed with malice aforethought).
Trial by Jury is the central tenet and sole justice system of legem terræ common law (which comprises the true European Constitution derived and adopted by all the European Peoples).
Legem terræ common law is created as the judgements of the people as Jurors in each Trial by Jury: it contains no statutes of government politicians nor rulings or ‘precedents’ of the judiciary.
Common law is the law of all the people in common: it forms the Supreme Law which binds those in government and legally controls the government’s modus operandi. In recognition of this latter fact, the Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System is inserted into all legitimate written Constitutions as the sole justice system for all infractions of laws and regulations, crimes civil, criminal and fiscal. The Citizen-Juror is sovereign and has the duty of judging the justice of statutes and every act of the enforcement of law. In this way, the Juror is the arbiter of law and protection of the people from tyranny.
Although Common Law can be written approximately, it is not ‘a written law’. That law which is written down and enacted by parliaments and congresses becomes a statute: as such, it is not ‘common law’. Indeed, it is one of the Juror’s Duties definitive of Trial by Jury, to judge the justice of those laws which governments write down and seek to enforce on the People. Likewise, the judiciary is an arm of government. Whatever a judge ‘rules’, it is an act of and by government. It is not ‘common law’.
By contrast, Common Law is expressed as the decisions of Jurors dictated by their conscience in the Trial by Jury: that is, the judgements (judicium; verdicts and sentences) produced by Jurors’ sense of right and wrong and fairness in the treatment of fellow citizens in every act of the enforcement of law.
The Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System is the mechanism through which Common Law is created, expressed, and the enactments of civilisation, liberty and equal justice are achieved. As noted, the Jury forms the Supreme Legislature and Judicature.
THE PRINCIPAL DICTATES OF COMMON LAW.
~It remains an eternal universal criterion of Justice that every disputed act of enforcement (Not Guilty plea) must be judged not by those who make and enforce the law, but by those who agree to abide by the laws.
~Hence, according to natural law, common law and equal justice, the Trial by Jury is the only justice system which is legal for all process of law, civil, criminal and fiscal.
~Common law prescribes that for any charge or offence, however serious or trivial, no person shall be dispossessed, fined, punished or in any way disadvantaged, except according to the lawful judgement or sentence of a unanimous jury of adult jurors randomly chosen according to common law principles, of his or her social-equals in the Common Law Trial by Jury.
“Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisetur, aut utlagetur, aut aliquo modo destruatur; nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terræ.” Magna Carta, 1215, Article 39. The Great Charter, which defines and prescribes legem terræ Trial by Jury (judicium parium) for all causes and hence institutes Equal Justice, contains primarily inscription of the universal common law. This explains why the Great Charter Constitution is revered as a monument in the achievement of Civilisation by mankind. In honour of its beneficial influence upon world civilisation in general and the U.S. Founders in particular, a rare copy of Magna Carta is kept in the same room as the U.S. Constitution in Washington, D.C. See essay EIS#11, "Specific Aspects of Magna Carta; The Great Charter Constitution," freely downloadable from the Campaign Material Page of the Democracy Defined website; and Article 61 (which follows).
~Common law prescribes the powers, duties and procedures of the ordinary citizens to judge the justice, fairness and the validity of the law and regulations in every disputed act of its enforcement (Not Guilty plea) in the Common law Trial by Jury.
THE MALIGNANT RUSE
BY WHICH
THE CORRUPT POLITICIAN, LAWYER AND JUDGE
SEEK TO OBLITERATE THE TRUE COMMON LAW AND
SUBJUGATE THE PEOPLE TO AUTHORITARIAN RULE.
It has been the perjurious ploy of statist politicians, lawyers and judiciaries to try to miseducate the Western people en masse into the wrong idea that ‘law’ derived from judicial precedents is ‘common law’; and that their so-called ‘common law’ is ‘made’ by government judges.
As explained, common law does not come from judges. To say it does, is a lie which the enemies of equal justice, rights and liberty repeat and want the people to believe, in order to give politicians arbitrary power to rule over the population; and to deprive the people of common law rights and protections.
Only feloniously-inclined (or in some cases ignorant) people ‘deny’ that legem terræ is the genuine constitutional common law which reigns supreme over written laws, governments, all men and women, including those who legislate. Such a denial by state personnel is itself a criminal contravention of the Common Law and the Constitutional Supreme Law, and must always be suspected of being a premeditated judicable act of mens rea.
Because the legislature can pass legislation which reverses or overrules those (non-common law) judge-made precedents and decisions which the governments perjuriously misname "common law," in a further act of criminal mendacity, by employing their premeditated abuse of the term ‘common law’ the statists come up with the warped speciosity that as government statutes can overrule (their counterfeit) "common law," that therefore, "parliament/ congress is sovereign !"
This criminal ruse and intended mind-manipulation (‘brain-washing’) serves the purpose of those malicious villains in government who want to make people feel helpless and completely inundated by the tide of government regulation, insidious misinformation and arbitrary control. It is only effective amongst those people who, for career, pay and self-interested motives, judicably collude and particpate in the Illegality of the Status Quo, and with those who are duped into ignorance of what common law actually is.
Government does not ‘grant’ or ‘bestow’ the right and power to do justice: upholding justice is the inherent duty of every citizen.
Government does not even have a right "to do justice" for that is exclusively the Trial by Jury right, duty and function of the Jurors randomly selected from amongst the people who agree to abide by the laws (see The Eternal Criterion of Justice, above).
Common law recognises and provides that the people have a perpetual obligation to enforce common law and protect themselves from lawlessness and injustices inflicted by criminals who acquire positions of power or government. Hence, common law (expressed as Articles 39 and 61 of Magna Carta, etc.), installs the People as the legal force to police, indict, punish and otherwise obtain redress.
The rôle of government in the justice system is executive, not judicial: that is, government carries out the judgements, sentences and decisions of the Jury. That government which is legitimate upholds Common Law and its Constitutional Trial by Jury Justice System.
TRIAL BY JURY IS THE PAN-OCCIDENTAL &
EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
The following statutes enacted in the century after Magna Carta, corroborate that our cherished American, European, British, Irish, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand, etc., heritage of the Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System, is, by statutes subsequently enacted, recognised as being Constitutional (legally irrevocable unless by universal amendment and consent) and is that of legem terræ, the people’s law of the land, the common law:
"That no man, from henceforth, shall be attached by any accusation, nor forejudged of life or limb, nor his land, tenements, goods, nor chattels, seized into the king’s hands, against the form of the Great Charter andthe law of the land."
Ruffhead’s Statutes, 5, Edward III, Ch. 9. (1331)
"Whereas it is contained in the Great Charter of the franchises of England, that none shall be imprisoned, nor put out of his freehold, nor of his franchises, nor free customs, unless it be according to the law of the land (nisi per legem terrae); it is accorded, assented, and established, that from henceforth none shall be taken by petition, or suggestion made to our lord the king, or to his council, unless it be by indictment or presentment of good and lawful people of the same neighbourhood [Trial by Jury] where such deeds be done in due manner, or by process made by writ original at the common law; nor that none be put out of his franchises, nor of his freehold, unless he be duly brought in to answer, and forejudged of the same by the course of the law [Trial by Jury]; and if anything be done against the same, it shall be redressed and holden for none."
Ruffhead’s Statutes, 25, Edward III, Ch. 4. (1350)
Emphases added.
AN IRREVOCABLE PRINCIPLE RECOGNISED
BY COMMON LAW IN REGARD TO ‘JUDGES’.
It is an irrevocable principle of the traditional (pan-) European, Irish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, the British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and the American People’s Common Law governing jurisprudence, and of Magna Carta (Article 53 of John’s Charter and 17 of Henry’s), that Trial shall be by Jury and that at Trial by Jury no judge or other officer appointed by government shall preside in criminal cases or lawsuits in which the government is also an interested party (called pleas of the crown in the U.K.). In such cases, without the observance of this prohibition there can be neither Trial by Jury, nor legaltrial of any type.
The reasons for this are simple and pure: regarding convening officers (‘judges’) at trials, impartiality and integrity cannot be obtained (nor realistically even expected) from people who enforce the laws who are selected by those who also make and maintain the laws. At the common "law of the land," whether in civil or criminal cases, all officers who convene trials are chosen (elected) by the people. At common law, all convenors (justices; judges) are themselves subject to common law and are answerable to the common law tribunals of the people (i.e., Trial by Jury), not protected by élite privilege nor impeachable by government and legislature.
See Book 4 of Blackstone’s Analysis of the Laws of England, p. 413; and Introduction to Gilbert’s History of the Common Pleas, p. 2, note, & p. 4; etc.
Trial by Jury is so-named, for in democratic societies the trial of a citizen is by fellow citizens who comprise the Jury. Trial is not ‘trial-by-government’ which could never be fair where government is also one of the contesting parties. Judges themselves comprise a branch of government, and, they are in the pay of government. Police, prison service and above all, prosecutors and judges are employed to enforce governments’ laws. Such personnel should never be asked, nor relied on, to decide impartially whether laws are just, for they must fulfil their task or face the fury of the government, their employer.
For these reasons given, government and judiciary are incompetent to require the conviction or punishment of any person for any offence whatever.
Q. "When is a judge not a judge?"
A. "When the ‘judge’ is not a member of the jury."
Until the Latin-derived word ‘juror’ was adopted, jurors were actually called the judges, in recognition of their rôle. "...the judges, for so the jury were called..." See p. 55 of Crabbe’s History of the English Law, etc.
In Trial by Jury, the Foreman or woman of the jury is the principal presiding officer.
In Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury, all adult citizens qualify for jury service (save the aged, the sick, convicts and lunatics). Common law requires Jurors to be indiscriminately chosen by lot or chance, so as to represent all views in society and protect minorities (see later sections on Jury Selection and Illegal ‘Jury Packing’ by the government).
Trial by Jury Was Constitutionally Emplaced for the Purposes of:
A.) not only ascertaining guilt or innocence of the accused and where necessary for apportioning retribution, but also
B.) of transcendent importance, as a barrier to protect the vast mass of innocent citizenry from the crimes of arbitrary government, i.e., unjust laws, tyranny; and from the corruption, prejudices and incompetence of fallible justices (judges). Trial by Jury enables the people to judge authoritatively what their liberties and laws are (as explained hereinafter), so that the people retain all the liberties which they wish to enjoy.
THE JUROR’S DUTIES IN TRIAL BY JURY.
Wherever Trial by Jury takes place, be it in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and numerous other countries, it is DEFINITIVE of Trial by Jury that, after swearing to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent, in finding their Verdict,
The Jurors Judge:
~on the justice of the law, and annul, by pronouncing the Not Guilty Verdict, any law or act of enforcement which is deemed unfair or unjust according to the juror’s conscience (i.e., sense of right and wrong);
~in addition to the facts, and
~on the admissibility of evidence (evidence not being pre-selected or screened-out by government or judge and/or prosecutor).
Jurors Must Judge:
~that the accused acted with malice aforethought, i.e., mens rea, a premeditated malicious motive to find guilt (‘guilt’ is a characteristic inherent or absent in motives and actions: it cannot be ascribed by legislation*);
~on the nature and gravity of the alleged offence; and where guilt is unanimously found,
~on mitigating circumstances if any (provocation; temptation; incitation); and
~set the sentence (with regard to its being fit and just).
* There is no moral justice nor political necessity (i.e., deterrent value) for punishing where there was nomens rea. (In the case of one person injuring another innocently or accidentally, the civil law suit and the Trial by Jury award appropriate compensation for damages.)
See Democracy Defined Essay EIS#8, "GUILTY?" OR "NOT GUILTY?" WRONGFUL PROSECUTION; AMNESTY & RESTITUTION.
For jurors not to do the above, or for someone other than the jurors to make any such decisions, is another process: call it ‘trial-by-someone-else’ if you will, or ‘trial-by-the-judge’ ― but this travesty cannot be defined as Trial BY JURY.
"There is only one Trial by Jury. It is mere falsehood to call a procedure "trial by jury" if the accused and any of the matters under judgement are tried by someone other than the Jury. There is no process and no meaning to the words Trial by Jury other than that which the words themselves prescribe."
See DEMOCRACY DEFINED ISBN 9781902848228, by Kenn d’Oudney.
The Criteria for Measuring the Legitimacy of Governments.
Legem terræ common law is indispensable to the maintenance of civil peace, the well-being of all the population, and to the inalienable right of humans to unmolested tranquillity of existence, privacy, and the pursuit of happiness. Hence, it is of supreme importance that, for their own benefit, every sane teen and adult comes to understand the common law and, without compromise, support and ceaselessly campaign for the restoration of its supremacy.
Common Law is the timeless supreme universal legal and moral code which ‘exists’ independently over statute law. Whether governments acknowledge and submit to legem terræ common law are the criteria for measuring their legitimacy.
IN CONSTITUTIONAL COMMON LAW TRIAL BY JURY:
~the jury has the power to call witnesses, advisers and appoint amicus curiæ*;
* amicus curiæ is Latin for ‘a friend to the court’; an impartial adviser not a party to the case; pronounced cure-ee-ee, the æ as in Cæsar; seize.
~the rule of law rôle of convenors of courts (‘judges’) is as a convenor and for arranging security; advisory, inasmuch as this may be requested by the jury, of which advice jurors may take only what is by them adjudged appropriate; and for the arranging of re-trials and appeals if necessitated by circumstances (see Gilbert’s History of the Common Pleas, pp. 57 & 70; and Vol. 1 of Palgrave’s Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, p. 277; etc.);
~those misnamed ‘justices’ or ‘judges’ (i.e., the convenors) are wholly subsidiary to and at the command of the jury and its Foreman or woman;
~the ‘judge’ has no judicial rôle or authority: this precludes the possibility of judges inflicting injustices as is so often the case today;
~self-evidently, a person without judicial authority cannot legitimately set ‘precedents’, make ‘case law’, ‘rulings’ on law, or ‘interpretations’ of law. Still less can the outpourings of a person bereft of a judicial position interpret or dictate the law in any way binding on a Jury. At the common law, for the irrevocable principles of fairness, impartiality and justice explained above, only the Jurors (not the government ‘judge’) try, i.e., judge, the case according to common law principles and duties;
~at common law, excepting criminals and lunatics, the functions and rôle of the ‘judge’, i.e., the convenor, are straightforward and can be undertaken by any elected or sortition (i.e., randomly) chosen adult inexpert in the law;
~laws which are plainly just require little debate or explanation. Until a written law is thus evidently and plainly just it merits no place place in the statute book: its prosecution requires Annulment-by-Jury; its expunction from the roll of legislation is mandated by jurors rejection of its enforcement;
~advice may be requested by the jurors from the convenor (‘judge’) who need not be qualified in the law to perform the functions of convenor because, according to common law, if explanation of a law is ever required, or its justice or validity and hence its very legality is disputed, both the plaintiff and the accused and their counsel and amicus curiæ may render such explication as the jury deems necessary;
~jurors may observe or reject advice about the law as they consider appropriate and decide the law and verdict according to their individual conscience (i.e., sense of fairness, right and wrong);
~the Trial by Jury is the only system which is legal for all process of law, civil, criminal and fiscal. This was duly recognised and inscribed into Magna Carta (viz. Article 39). That is to say, government only has the power to act against a person, his property or liberties by the authority of, and according to the sentence of a jury.
~contempt charges laid on persons by juries or judges have to be tried as for any crime, that is, by jury;
~the jurors’ duty to do justice, and the Right of Juries to find the Verdict according to the jurors’ convictions and conscience, are amongst the duties which define the Trial as being by Jury (as opposed to it being trial by government or trial-by-judge).
~all evidence can be presented, and requires to be considered for its admissibility by the jurors ―especially if it reveals partiality, injustice, an unfounded nature, or venality in the law.
~by ascribing judgement (i.e., all judicial functions) to the peers (jurors), the Trial by Jury comprises a Constitution per se, allowing punishments neither to be prescribed by statute, that is, by the legislative power, nor in any other manner by government or judges. Consequently, all statutes or regulations prescribing particular punishments for particular ‘offences’, or giving the government’s judges any authority to set punishments, were, and are, void. Such sentences pertaining thereto are Miscarriages of Justice. All persons suffering persecution thereby are due a proper Trial by Jury (re-trial); and if found to have acted innocently, i.e., behaved without malice aforethought (the criterion by which ‘guilt’ is defined by common law), are due (overdue) Amnesty and Restitution.
~common law takes into account the fact that if the amounts of fines were left to be set by the government (judge) it would represent an irresistible pecuniary temptation for government to impose oppressive amercements on people. Similarly, if the judges were allowed to set sentences other than fines, they could be seduced by corrupt motives into threatening or imposing harsh sentences to achieve criminal aims.
~in short, common law and accordingly the Constitution forbid government functionaries from interfering in any aspect of the judgement and sentencing of a citizen’s behaviour in any case whatsoever. The pan-European common law inscribed into Magna Carta prescribes that all aspects of the case are to be judged by the jurors. It was and remains the purpose of Trial by Jury to protect the people from all possible oppression by government. The jury and only the jury set the sentence.
~common law does not prescribe that the government must punish according to the sentence of the peers, but that government shall not punish "unless according to" that sentence. It does not oblige government to execute the sentence; but it forbids government from going beyond the sentence. Government might lessen the sentence or acquit on grounds of law, or even pardon. However, government cannot legally punish beyond the extent of the jurors’ sentence. In this way, the Constitution forbids government from punishing, except according to the judgement of peers: "nisi per judicium parium suorum."
~convenors (‘judges’) cannot pronounce sentences unless they have been first set by the jury following a lawful common law Trial by Jury. Hence, legally, judges cannot procede summarily in any case whatever, even when a plea of guilty is entered. For convenors to do so judicably breaches common law.
~Whilst administrative courts (justices, judges) may fulfil the duty of the judicial department to interpret the meanings of the words comprising a statute, to indicate to the legislature what the law may be and reflect upon statutes, legislation, regulations and such evidence as is submitted to them, this is a bureaucratic, advisory rôle. To be lawful the Trial of all crimes must in every case be by legem terræ common law Trial by Jury. Not only are the justices’ interpretations and rulings on the law never binding on a Jury, but in every Trial by Jury, sine qua non, the Jurors are the judges; the Jurors alone judge and decide on the admissibility of evidence and the legality of the statutes.
~The common law Jury forms the People’s Supreme Legislature and Judicature.
THE ILLEGALITY OF THE STATUS QUO.
Anyone acquainted with the process of law in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere today, will see how far removed the practices of courts are from the ideals and legally binding stipulations of those nations’ Constitutions. Today, every single one of the above requirements definitive of Trial by Jury (including judging on the facts of the case) is illegally forbidden, interfered with and/or obstructed by the ‘judges’.
Labyrinthine deceits of modern usurpation inhabit the politicians’ statute book, which bears no resemblance and pays no respect to universal common laws of truth, justice, liberty, and equality before the law. Common law is inserted into the Constitution to protect the people from government abuse of power. Common law legally binds government and controls the government’s modus operandi. As distinct from despotism and barbarism, this common law is the definitive basis of civilisation, democracy and legitimate government, sine qua non.
The Juror’s Duty Is Simple.
It should be remembered that the Juror’s duty is uncomplicated: ‘guilt’ of a crime can only be pronounced where the accused’s act was a deliberate, premeditated one of malice aforethought. Similar judgements are the daily fact of life in commonplace human interactions. We make such appraisals frequently... "Is this person behaving in a way that is dishonest or malign?" "Is that person telling the truth?" "Why are they doing that?" "Are these people genuine?" (Again, note that in the case of one person injuring anotherinnocently or accidentally, the civil law suit and the Trial by Jury award appropriate compensation for damages.)
Regardless of the intricacies of evidence (and it is always for the prosecution to present a clear case), in cases of fraud the contrast between genuine innocence and malicious motivation is especially easy for jurors to discern. Only ulterior mens rea, i.e., criminal intent, lies behind politicians and other individuals advocating denial to the accused of Trial by Jury and the handing over of fraud cases to ‘trial-by-government-judge’.
Laws Require To Be Just.
The inscribed governmental statute laws require to be just and simple if they are to be met with unanimous approbation from juries. Again, it is always for the plaintiff to make his cause clear.
If explanation of a law is ever necessary and disputation over its fairness and hence its very legality arises, then this explication requires to be performed equally by plaintiff and defendant and/or defence and prosecution counsel, not exclusively by the convenor (judge).
Juries decide on the justice, validity and applicability of laws in every act of enforcement. Common law, being exclusively the product of the sense of fairness, natural law and justice of the ordinary people, is known almost intuitively to people everywhere. With a modicum of thought, people realise that justicemakes its case plain to sane adults in all times and places.
Common Law Trials by Jury Do Not Drag On.
With the Jury deciding on the admissibility of the evidence and supervising the process, Trial by Jury brings justice which is fair, swift and sure. Prosecution counsel must marshal the evidence to present an undelayed, forthright, straightforward comprehensible case; not the protracted lucrative charade in which lawyers feign and wallow today.
Citizens involved in Jury Duty embody authority of the country and its people: they are properly respected and compensated.
Crime Is Diminished.
Brutish intrusions by the state and its personnel into innocent citizens’ lives are subject to prosecution and, where appropriate, to just retribution. Vexatious regulations are obliterated; life, liberty, property and rights are held in the hands of the people themselves (not subject to arbitrary government intervention). Crime and litigation in the society run by ultimate rule of the people deciding the law as Jurors, are significantly diminished. The mass of partisan, inequitable and venal legislation (extant today), is duly annulled, unenforceable and generally expunged. Hence, the number of prosecutions is greatly reduced.
Why Is the Citizen-Juror’s Judgement on the Law
So Vital a Part of any Fair and Competent Justice System ?
See the following paragraphs quoted from THE REPORT, ISBN 9781902848204. THE REPORT is endorsed by academics and judges, and has a Foreword written by a Nobel laureate Official Adviser to U.S. government.
"In the governance of men and women, few, if any, matters are of greater consequence than the diligence and precision with which the judiciary observes and adheres to the definitive code of Common Law Trial by Jury, long established for the determination of an accused person’s guilt or innocence."
"All governments, comprised as they are of human beings, are fallible. Governments are capable of passing bad or oppressive [i.e., illegal] legislation, and authorising and organising the enforcement of such bad laws. When Trial by Jury is disallowed or juries are limited in their rôle to decide guilt or innocence only on the evidence produced by the state [government] prosecutor of whether the accused had broken a law or not, any jury acting in this restricted way would not be able to protect good fellow citizens from unjust laws or the oppressions of the state. These ‘show trials’ are observed to take place in fascist, communist, and primitive tyrannies of totalitarian dictatorships, in countries which claim to be ‘democratic’. They are traditionally scorned for the mockery of justice that they are when compared to the democratic standards of Trial by Jury."
THE PURPOSE OF TRIAL BY JURY.
"People who judge authoritatively what their liberties are, retain all the liberties they wish to enjoy. This is Liberty. Trial by Jury is a trial by the People of the country, distinguished from a trial by the government. The intention of this trial is to enable the People to determine their liberties; because, if the government determines the People’s liberties, then government has absolute power over the People; and this is the definition of despotism."
"In recognition of these immutable facts, Trial by Jury was adopted by the People as part of ‘the law of the land’ [i.e., common law] and installed subsequently by written constitutional law [Magna Carta; U.S. Constitution] as that tribunal which establishes permanently within the domain of the People, as opposed to the government, supreme judgement by citizen-jurors of the People’s liberties. Simultaneously, by that singular act in Trial by Jury, jurors (not judges, the government’s beholden employees) decide which behaviour is anti-social, forbidden, of criminal intent and punishable."
"To a degree achieved by no other constitution, Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury responds to mankind’s unceasing need: to enforce just laws; to uphold the innocent; to protect minorities; to nullify arbitrary government; and to reject injustice."
Constitutional adoption and practical implementation of the Citizen-Juror’s Duty in Trial by Jury to judge the justice of every act of law enforcement, defines and comprises the basis of Democracy, sine qua non.
In practice and by definition, government which denies its ordinary citizens the right to judge the justice of the laws and the manner of their enforcement on their fellow citizens at trial, is a despotism. This is explained by Winston Churchill, as follows.
CHURCHILL’S VIEW.
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist."
Sir Winston Churchill, Author, Chronicler, Historian, Philosopher, Nobel laureate for Literature; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
"...the judgement of pares or peers [equals]," judicium parium; is also known as Trial by Jury.
Excerpt of telegram from Cairo to the U.K. Home Secretary on November the 21st, 1943. Emphases added.
Constitutions and governments which deny the Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System installconstitutional despotism. Only as long as juries of ordinary citizens have the final say, government remains the servant, not the master, of the people.
‘Laws’ can be, and are, illegal for a variety reasons, such as their being inequitable [i.e., unfair], or unfounded [not founded in truth, or, technically incorrect], or prejudiced in favour of one party to the contravention of the human rights or legal interests of another. Such tyrannical ‘laws’ are unlawful.
Definition. Tyranny is defined as: oppressive rule administered with injustice; the cruel and arbitrary use of authority.
The ordinary person, the mechanic, the writer, the businessman, the window-cleaner, the teacher, the shop assistant, is there as the juror to protect the interests of the people (him or herself) from crime and unfairness, from whichever source it derives.
Unless this common law Trial by Jury holds sway, the career politician comprises part of an ongoing élite which must inevitably then be the overlords of the ordinary people. Majorities voting in the house will reflect interests of groups unfairly, at the expense of others. Tyranny must come to prevail.
Without the authority of the Common Law Trial by Jury being the sole Justice System in force, only violence and revolution can stop a government bent on inflicting acts of injustice on the people.
Protection is lawfully and peacefully achieved by ordinary people who protect themselves through the power and the duty of jurors in Trial by Jury to judge the laws, and prevent (annul) the prosecutions of unjust laws by finding the oppressed citizen Not Guilty when he or she refuses to comply with an unjust law or act of enforcement. According to common law, the government can only enforce a prosecution on the authority and according to the sentence of a unanimous jury of randomly selected citizens.
Unanimity, twelve-out-of-twelve, cannot be produced where ordinary folk such as home and property owners are being tyrannised by the state or bank. Arbitrary dispossessions are struck down by citizen-jurors and unjust laws are expunged altogether from the statute book. There is no ‘immunity’ for those responsible for unjust interventions, statist or private: they fall subject to potential arraignment for crimes at common law by abused and affected persons in private prosecutions at the People’s Common Law Trial by Jury Courts.
See THE CITIZENS’ PRIVATE PROSECUTIONS (above).
It was specifically and precisely to prevent acts of arbitrary dispossession of people’s property (with or without compensation) and redress interference in the lawful rights and affairs of ordinary people, that Trial by Jury for all crimes, civil, criminal and fiscal, was installed in the legally-binding Western constitutions. Furthermore, these acts are crimes according to the timeless supreme secular morality of legem terræ common law.
Political parties receive the largest contributions from those who can afford to donate them: corporations, unions, landowners, financiers. Corporations’ contributions are not made for the purpose of protecting the liberty, justice, rights and interests of the People, who create the wealth and from whom the wealth derives. The controllers of these organisations do not part with their own money; that is to say, tax-deductible contributions come from money taken from the ordinary subscribers or customers.
These bloc groups’ owners, banks, executives and directors, have their own interests which must be reflected by the party’s policy if it is to receive the considerable sums provided. Then, to become a politician, candidates are strictly required to adopt the party’s policies. Without common law Trial by Jury holding sway, this system guarantees that the politician is partisan, biased, partial and hence, corrupt.
THE COMMON LAW CRIME OF INJUSTICE, AND
THE WORKINGS AND RESULTS OF THE TRIAL BY JURY SYSTEM.
However complicated the facts of the case are, it is axiomatic that, literate or not, all sane adult men and women can recognise injustice: it takes no special learning for an adult to know when a law is just. A virtue unique to Trial by Jury for all causes (lawsuits) civil, criminal, and fiscal, is that it protects citizens for all time from injustice, unjust laws and arbitrary government.
The natural laws of equity (fairness) and justice are known to all sane adults and, in the jury situation, jurors uniformly judge what constitutes fairness in a law or in the act of its enforcement; see Justice William Jones; Jones on Bailments; & see Democracy Defined Essay EIS#6, THE UNIVERSAL SENSE OF FAIRNESS: "DO-AS-YOU-WOULD-BE-DONE-BY."
One of the beauties of authentic Common Law Trial by Jury is the predictability of its verdicts. Judgements to determine the verdict made by randomly chosen, disinterested citizens in the rôle of juror in Trial by Jury, are virtually universally acclaimed to be uniform.
Since pre-historical time immemorial, juries of people from all backgrounds, some literate, others not, have agreed on and enforced the common law against the crime of injustice, that is, any act of intrinsically malicious motive, mens rea, such as tyranny, murder, rape, bodily harm, mental cruelty, torture, robbery, theft, extortion, arbitrary dispossession, usury, fraud and so on. Crime receives the universal condemnation of men and women in juries in all times and places. This phenomenon is produced for the following reasons.
Whilst outside of the jury situation, adults behave (whether fairly to others or not) according to what they consider to be in their interests, within the jury, when disinterested, randomly-selected citizens know the facts from which a verdict is to be inferred, they arrive at the same conclusion or verdict unless there is reasonable doubt ceded by the inconclusive nature of the evidence, or they perceive injustice in the law, or injustice in the act of its enforcement.
This is because common law juries know that they are there to protect themselves as well as their fellow citizens by enforcing the just laws with unanimity, whilst the unjust or venal statutes and the enforcement of injustices by corrupt, incompetent or prejudiced judges are fittingly annulled by the pronouncing of the Not Guilty Verdict.
It serves the interest of the individual citizen and the People at large to do so. That is to say, the People reliably enforce just laws; and, only laws which are just are those which should and must be enforced.
What is more, even and especially the covert undiscovered felon (murderer, robber fraudster, mobster, sex offender, etc.) called to serve on a jury, enforces the just laws, for not to do so would reveal his insalubrious character to the other jurors, thereby bringing on himself numerous malconsequences.
Common law juries continuously enforce the just laws with unanimity, whilst unjust or venal statutes and the enforcement of injustices by fallible judges, are fittingly annulled (i.e., Annulment-by-Jury) by the pronouncing of the Not Guilty Verdict.
THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE.
The democratic Principle of our traditional Western Constitutions’ Trial by Jury is that it is the Will of the People represented by indiscriminately chosen Jurors, not the will of the court or the current transient government, that must determine what laws shall be established, maintained, and how they are enforced. In this way, Trial by Jury is the common law’s Mechanism of Authority by which all the rights of all the People are protected, and on which all rights depend. Hence, Thomas Jefferson’s "anchor":
"I consider Trial by Jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
Lawyer Thomas Jefferson; U.S. President; Author of the Declaration of Independence; co-Founder of the Democratic Party.
See Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H.A. Washington, Lippincotts, Philadelphia.
CONSTITUTIONAL DESPOTISM: TRIAL-BY-JUDGE.
Current affairs and history relate a chilling litany of the judiciary’s desertion of the principles of equity and justice in complacent careers of depraved cruel enforcement of grotesque injustices on citizens innocent of any crime (no mens rea). Apparently ‘cultured’, judges past and present nevertheless ‘justify’ and enforce the most abject of legislation, e.g. Nürnberg Race Laws; despotic statist "constitutions"; complicity in the establishing of an agenda biased in favour of particular individuals against the legitimate interests of others; primitive ‘religious’ oppressions; massively crime-generating inherently illegal commodity ‘prohibitions’; etc. This is the interminable calamity of governments’ trial-by-judge.
Without Trial by Jury — no matter how many new ‘Bills of Rights’, ‘European Conventions on Human Rights’ or fabricated ‘constitutions’ — when it comes to true justice, these legislative contrivances arefigments: worthless, shaming pieces of paper — fine-worded fatal "Munich guarantees." This is so because judges are governments’ paid and bound obligants, who continuously, unconscionably, and judicablyenforce injustices and infract the laws and tenets which normal human decency and democratic constitutions emplace.
The Palladium of the People’s Liberties.
Founded on and resulting from Common Law Trial by Jury installed by Magna Carta in 1215 in England, this Constitutional Justice System earned respect worldwide as the most democratic constitution and the finest justice system ever devised; coveted by and the aspiration of suppressed populations elsewhere.
For centuries since 1215, the English, and people everywhere have revered and called Magna Carta "the Palladium* of the People’s liberties." The ordinary citizen-juror’s duty to judge the justice of every act of law enforcement in the Trial by Jury is the foundation of the People’s sincere belief that all Britons never would be slaves; and that the United Kingdom, the United States, and the numerous post-colonial nations which constitutionally adopted the Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System, are democracies.
* Definition. Palladium, any safeguard; a symbol, metaphorical or statuary, which represents the protection of the liberties and rights of man. Derived from Pallas Athene, Hellenic Greek goddess of wisdom and war. Today, the world’s most famous Palladia are the Trial by Jury, and The Statue of Liberty in New York harbour.
The repeatedly ratified Great Charter of English Liberties is legally irrevocable. That is to say, it isconstitutionally installed: its provisions cannot legally be repealed or superseded by statutes, politicians, legislatures or governments. Indeed, the Great Charter specifically condemns and excommunicates all who undermine or attempt to alter its protections of the People.
NOTA BENE: Unless unanimously revoked by the Will of all the English People themselves, the constitutional authority of Magna Carta, The Great Charter of English Liberties, stands forever as the Supreme Law of the Land. Magna Carta legally binds government and judiciary. The installation of Trial by Jury and the Common Law Articles imposed on governments by Constitutional Law Magna Carta were taken so seriously by all the People as to incur the most complete punishment and damnation known, Excommunication, upon every individual or government, who, from that moment on, at any time, breaches or in the smallest way undermines Magna Carta’s strictures. Excommunication is a potentially life-threatening sentence of internal exile, social disgrace and eternal spiritual damnation, which separates the convict recipient from all familial, social and religious communication with other members of society.
At the 1253 ratification, all the legislative assembly, including monarch Henry III, bishops and barons, ratified Magna Carta and The Sentence of Curse and Excommunication on infractors of Magna Carta. The Curse and Sentence were pronounced by Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury. To read the Curse, see Statutes of the Realm, Volume 1, page 6; or Ruffhead’s Statutes, Volume 1, page 20; or page 197 of TRIAL BY JURY: Its History, True Purpose and Modern Relevance ISBN 9781902848723, by d’Oudney & Spooner.
Authors’ note: This execration was pronounced by the Universal Catholic Church, i.e., before the Sixteenth Century schism. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, so we leave the richly deserved eternal damnation of our politicians’ souls to those whose concern it be; but for their temporal Crimes Against Peace and Humanity, and for the ruin of our societies, we hereby indict them and all their abject works.
ARTICLE 61.
Legem terræ, the genuine timeless European Constitution, and Magna Carta form a constitutional law which "for ever" limits the power of administrative government, and irrevocably emplaces the People’s Common Law Trial by Jury Courts as the sole, the ultimate and the Supreme Legislature.
For the well-being of the entire population, Magna Carta was emplaced to give recognition to people’s permanent supreme duty to curtail arbitrary (i.e., corrupt, illegal, tyrannical) government, and to uphold and enforce Equal Justice. As we have seen, Magna Carta sagaciously emplaced the only system known to humankind by which to achieve this object peacefully.
Article 61 installs the people as the legal force to police, arrest, indict, try, punish and otherwise obtain redress over wrongdoers acting as, or in the name of, government.
It is by perjury and treason that the completely incorrect notion that "The United Kingdom does not have a written constitution," is spread. It is precisely Magna Carta’s limitation of government power which gives rise to the ulterior motive behind the current miseducation by some politicians, members of the judiciary, manipulated media and state miseducation, that England or Britain has "no constitution" or "no written constitution," and the ignominious politicians’ lawless moves to try to eliminate or circumvent the timeless, universal, binding supreme values which found the legem terræ Constitution and its Trial by Jury Justice System to which they and all are eternally subject.
Regarding the propagated false notion of "Crown or government immunity from prosecution" in particular:
Article 61 recognises and establishes that no one is ‘above’ the law of the land. No one who infracts legem terræ common law is ‘immune’ to prosecution. This stricture specifically includes the head of state, the most powerful people, government itself (i.e., executive, legislature and judiciary) and all the agencies of government. The Great Charter recognises and dictates that the people have the permanent duty to enforce their Constitution and the common law legem terræ, and protect themselves from lawlessness and injustices inflicted by government.
Excerpt from Article 61: "If we (Head of State), our chief justice, our officials (government), or any of our servants (government employees, police, armed services and bureaucrats) offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security... Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us (government) to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command."
To recapitulate:
Government does not ‘grant’ or ‘bestow’ the right and power to do justice: upholding justice is the inherent duty of every citizen. The universal supreme secular common law recognises and provides for the fact that the people have an eternal obligation to enforce common law and protect themselves from lawlessness and injustices inflicted by criminals who acquire positions of power or government. The universal and supreme secular morality of natural, and of the traditional pan-European Legem Terræ Common Law (as expressed in Article 61 of Magna Carta), installs the People in perpetuity as the legal force to police, arrest, indict, try, punish and otherwise obtain redress over wrongdoers acting as, or in the name of, government.
Never let it be forgotten that throughout the History of the World right up to date, ALL the greatest CRIMES have been and are being perpetrated by, and in the name of, government.
NOTE: It is only malicious opponents of equal justice who oppose the rights and duty of the people to enforce justice upon those in government or powerful positions in society who infract the common law. From ignorance or malignance, they refer to this article as permitting legal "rebellion." However, the just enforcement of constitutional common law is never "rebellion." That is the perverted miswording of those who cause and maintain the Illegality of the Status Quo. Those who uphold and enforce constitutional common law on wrongdoers are never to be thought of or described as "rebels." The just enforcement ofjudicium parium, the judgement of peers, is the due process of Common Law Trial by Jury prescribed and defined by Magna Carta and adopted by all legitimate constitutions. This is the justice system which creates, defines and upholds democracy and all civilisation, sine qua non... hardly a "rebellion" !
On reading its contents, the Great Charter demonstrates that it possesses the constitutional characteristics of supremacy and permanence.
Magna Carta constitutionally installed Trial by Jury for all causes (lawsuits), civil, criminal and fiscal,"in perpetuity" and "for ever," (see Preamble and Articles 61 & 63 of Magna Carta of the 15th day of June, 1215). This was explicitly for the protection of the individual from arbitrary (i.e., antidemocratic; tyrannical) government. In Britain, whatever disgraceful usurpation and lawless ‘legislation’ has nowadays been introduced by unthinking or criminal statist* politicians, executive, legislatures and judiciary, the arbitrary act of denying the accused the right to a trial by one’s peers in any disputed cause (lawsuit), is a most grave crime per se. All persons thus persecuted by government, are entitled to elect Trial by Jury and if acquitted, are due Amnesty and Restitution.
* Definition, statist: one who believes in absolute control of the People by government officials in all aspects of life, social, economic and other; as opposed to the democrat [not party-political] who, as shown herein, believes in control of the government by the People. To achieve this end and protect the innocent from arbitrary government, the democratic person uncompromisingly insists and requires ordinary citizens as jurors in Trial by Jury to have the final say and control of every act of law enforcement.
NOVERINT UNIVERSI
Let All Men and Women Know.
BE IT KNOWN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION, RUSSIA, INDIA, CHINA,
THE MIDDLE EAST AND THROUGHOUT THE NEW AND OLD WORLD:
The supreme universal secular morality and law of the timeless legem terræ as inscribed into Magna Carta, with mankind’s model justice system, the common law Trial by Jury, apply in all times and places. Individuals within government who abuse their privilege and access to power, who surrender to corruption and who in any way breach the universally applicable common law Constitution are liable to prosecution before, and just retribution by, the Judgements of the People’s Common Law Trial by Jury Courts for their crimes.
Ref. Essay EIS#11, "Specific Aspects of Magna Carta: The Great Charter Constitution," freely downloadable from the Democracy Defined Campaign Material webpage.
Whether you vote Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Labour, Conservative, etc., if you consent to the Trial by Jury being removed, or it being run by judges who interfere with or deny the Citizen-Juror’s definitive Duties to judge the law, facts, admissibility of evidence, on mens rea, mitigating circumstances and the sentence, then you are party to despotic control by a government employee and you are the enemy of all democratic people: you are a totalitarian statist. You do not believe in the advanced profound concepts upon which compassionate true civilisation is based; you reject Trial by Jury, mankind’s model justice system, the U.S. and U.K. Constitutions, the traditional authentic European Constitution, and you renounce the fine democracy of the Founding Fathers.
Better never to vote at all than vote for a person who does not make JUSTICE the prime aim of government by RESTORATION and UNIVERSAL ADOPTION of common law Trial by Jury.
In addition to the presidents, prime ministers and chief justices often quoted in their advocation of the superiority of Trial by Jury over all systems of justice and law enforcement, the following is further impartial appraisal of the Great Charter and Trial by Jury, and, by implication, of the U.S. Constitution, which also bases its Justice System on the Trial by Jury. Legal historian and philosopher Sir James Mackintosh (a Scot) says of Magna Carta:
"To have produced it, to have preserved it, to have matured it, constitute the immortal claim of England on the esteem of Mankind. Her Bacons and Shakespeares, her Miltons and Newtons, with all the truth which they have revealed, and all the generous virtues which they have inspired, are of inferior value when compared with the subjection of men and their rulers to the principles of justice; if, indeed, it be not more true that these mighty spirits could not have been formed except under equal laws, nor roused to full activity without the influence of that spirit which the Great Charter breathed over their forefathers."
Chapter Three of Mackintosh’s History of England. Emphasis added.
Hume calls the Trial by Jury:
"an institution admirable in itself, and the best calculated for the preservation of liberty and the administration of justice, that was ever devised by the wit of man."
Chapter Two of Hume’s History of England.
"The trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law. It is the most transcendent privilege which any subject* can enjoy or wish for, that he cannot be affected in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours and equals."
Book 3, Blackstone’s Analysis of the Laws of England, p. 379. Emphases added.
*N.B. "Any subject" refers to every citizen in the realm — not just the nobility.
Trial by Jury is the vital part of The Constitution, which places the liberties of the people within their own keeping. Of this Blackstone says:
"The Trial by Jury is that trial by the peers [i.e., equals] of every Englishman which, as the grand bulwark of his liberties, is secured to him by the Great Charter. The liberties of England cannot but subsist so long as this palladium* remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, which none will be so hardy as to make, but also from all secret machinations which may sap and undermine it."
4 Blackstone, pp. 349-50.
See the works on the English [cf. British] Constitution, history and law by Hume, Crabbe, Palgrave, Gilbert, Mackintosh, Blackstone, & Stuart’s The Constitution of England. Also see TRIAL BY JURY, by d’Oudney & Spooner ISBN 9781902848723 for further quotations and bibliographical sources.
The denial of the Common Law Trial by Jury transfers supreme power from the People to a ruling élite: a despotism or oligarchy. The denial of the Juror’s rôle and Duty denies Trial by Jury.
U.S. President John Adams, lawyer, pronounced about the Juror:
"It is not only his Right but his Duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court [i.e., the judge]."
(Yale Law Journal, 1964; 173. See more in DEMOCRACY DEFINED books.)
Today, however, in the U.S., U.K. and throughout the formerly democratic West, Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury is denied by politicians’ illegal antidemocratic ‘legislative’ contraventions; and, where it does purport to take place, Trial by Jury is precluded by judges’ unlawful intervention to forbid jurors from judging on equity issues, on the justice of the law and its enforcement. From this vile seed despotism is extant, all-pervading and visibly growing.
MALCONDITIONING.
Thucydides* observed truly that most people will uncritically believe the first account they hear about something without taking the trouble to find out whether it is true.
*See History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides.
If a person does not understand the workings of Trial by Jury by which it protects (is intended to protect) the population from arbitrary government, unjust laws and the prejudices and incompetence of judges, then that person could not be expected to comprehend the meaning of the related word, democracy. From ignorance, this person will always misuse and abuse the vocabulary. The question is: are people open and willing to learn ? Or are they permanently set on their purblind course after the statists have finished malindoctrinating them ?
Many people do not know, or do not wish others to know, democracy’s purpose and proven constitutional means of securing equally, liberty and justice for all: the workings of the people’s common law of the land and its inimitable justice system of Trial by Jury. They are perversely determined to inflict their abhorrent incorrectitudes and mental malconditioning on others ("brainwashed").
FACTS ABOUT DEMOCRACY.
The historical facts about Democracy in Hellenic Greece and everywhere else, are that it was a virile system and devotedly supported by the mass of just, civilised, peace and freedom-loving people.
The democratic state based on the Constitution of government by the Trial by Jury, survived two attempts to overthrow it by wealthy aristocrats and oligarchs with their mercenaries and slaves. The wealthiest sought total power. These bloody coups were efforts at imposing an authoritarian state which immediately targeted for suppression the citizens’ rights in Trial by Jury, by which ordinary people were able to judge and annul any unjust laws and reject the enforcement of injustices. Notably, one of these ultimately failing coups which nevertheless resulted in much bloodshed and loss of innocent life, was inspired by the maleficent anti-democrat, élitist Socrates.
N.B. For information about Socrates’ inhuman ambitions and his student Plato’s book eulogising the ideal prototypical ‘fascist’ state, The Republic, which was adopted as the official doctrine of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (NAZI) Party, and on Socrates and Plato, the original traitors to Democracy, see Essay EIS#10 "We the People and the Matter of Words," freely downloadable from the Democracy Defined Campaign Material webpage.
As noted, Democratic free Athens eventually only succumbed because of the mighty invasion of the Macedonian, Alexander the Great (conqueror), whose far-flung martial exploits set back the socio-political development of mankind.
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY.
"We the people" (demos, the people) is the direct transcription of the Hellenic democratic ideal into the Constitution of the United States, as follows:
"We the People, demos, the people, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Article III. Section 2. "The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury."
It is not necessary for the word ‘democracy’ to appear in the wording of a constitution or declaration for the state of democracy to be created, because, whereas neither Magna Carta nor the U.S. Constitution insert this word, in the U.S. Constitution, demos is stipulated in the English words, We the people, accompanied by constitutional installation of democracy’s definitive attribute, the Trial by Jury through which the people have overall rule; and Magna Carta is written in Latin, prescribing the details of rule by the people through legem terræ, the common law of the land and its central tenet, "judicium parium," the Trial by Jury.
Ref. EIS#11, "An Essay on Specific Aspects of Magna Carta, the Great Charter Constitution," freely downloadable from the Democracy Defined Campaign Material webpage. See how Magna Carta emplaces the judgement of peers Trial by Jury, thus following the form of the then extant, pan-European People’s true Constitution.
Demokratia, an ordered democratic society, is extant wherever common law Trial by Jury functions, regardless of whether in a republic, a constitutional monarchy or within a small society bereft of formal government.
N.B. DEFINITION.
Definition, republic: a form of government without a monarch.
Etymological derivation, Latin. res, affair; publica, public; respublica, commonwealth.
Every type of government could be found in a republic, apart from the fact that the head of state is not a monarch. There are numerous republics: democratic; theocratic (‘religious’); military; fascist; authoritarian; totalitarian; communist/ socialist; and so on. They all have constitutions and all are constitutional republics.
As for the U.S. Constitution, Article 4; Section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government [as distinguished from a MONARCHY], and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence."
There is nothing intrinsically benignant about republics: they come in all shapes. The blood-soaked post French Revolution mob-rule was a republic, like that of the Russian Bolsheviks. They were ochlocracies (rule by the mob), along with governments of the sanguine communist Chinese and the deluded adherents to the violent primitive ‘religious’ theocracies. Yet, these are all constitutional republics.
ENEMIES OF EQUAL JUSTICE AND LIBERTY.
Democracy, which establishes responsible freedom of the people, always has enemies amongst power-hungry oligarchs, would-be tyrants (from Socrates and Plato to banker Hamilton, religious fundamentalist Ames, et al) and their abject servitors; and there are others whose misuse of the word demonstrates that they simply did not (and today do not) know its meaning. Generations have been confused and deluded by the premeditated or unwitting incorrectitudes of Fisher Ames, Webster, Franklin, Hamilton and others...
Despots do not want you to know the real meaning of democracy ― for fear you might reclaim it for the good people of the world. To this day, plutocrats and those who sow disinformation for them, remain the foes of democracy ― because democracy emasculates tyrants and emancipates the population.
Note that law ‘dictionaries’ express perverted meanings intentionally imposed by politically-motivated legislation. They reflect the will of our oligarchical rulers, not the truths of history and the sciences of etymology, philology, and semantics. The misinformation which they and other modern ‘law’ books impart exemplifies propaganda which controls the mind of the credulous simpleton.
See Essay EIS#21, "THE VALUE OR OTHERWISE OF LAW DICTIONARIES," freely downloadable from the Democracy Defined Campaign Material webpage.
The behind-the-scenes money masters, autocratic ‘rulers’ of the West, have now all but ‘ruled out’ Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury, Habeas Corpus, and freedom from arbitrary arrest (i.e., without probable cause), thereby precipitating nations into definition as tyrannies as opposed to democracies. The Founders of the U.S. and the authors and instigators of Magna Carta who risked all to gain freedom and installed Trial by Jury as a barrier to protect the people from common and government crimes, would have the greatest disdain for this generation for allowing these malignant events to come to pass.
The ongoing demolition by enemies-within of the democracies of the West is hardly surprising though, for as long as Westerners allow themselves to be miseducated as to the meaning of such important words as democracy and republic; and they are so completely flummoxed by the disinformation promulgated by the servitors of the wealthy oligarchs that it leads them even to disparage democracy ! Yet, democracy with its definitive attribute of Trial by Jury, is the singular proven means of their secular salvation by which equal justice and the lives, rights, liberty, and property of ALL the people are peacefully secured.
As Founders of the Democratic-Republican Party, Madison or Jefferson would hardly be likely to call democracy ‘vile’ or ‘mob rule’! Nowhere in Madison’s copious writings does the word ‘vile’ even appear. Wake up, People! The obvious example of the dupe or a servitor of tyrants is the person who maligns democracy as "two wolves, and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." These are facile fictions, libels and calumnies adopted or made up by the likes of Rose Wilder Lane and Devvy Kidd to delude people and lead them astray...
It is not credible (unless they are being deliberately untruthful), that people who talk of the wolves and sheep could have researched the history, etymology and signification of the word democracy: demos-kratein, demokratia: the people rule through Trial by Jury.
MAY EVERY CITIZEN OF THE WORLD BEWARE !
If a juror or any citizen accepts as the law that which the judge states, then that juror or citizen has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that was once the citizen’s safeguard of liberty.
The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was time.
Complacent, insouciant, ignorant servile populations of Westerners, e.g. Americans, British, Germans, French, Italians, Spanish and other Europeans, New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians, have allowed antidemocratic politicians to strip them of their legal protections which are universal, inherent and inalienable: the Juror’s Rights and Duty and the Trial by Jury Justice System. People have permitted institutionalisation of despotic attitudes. Oppression has taken root and become widespread even in the former great bastions of democracy.
Trial-by-judge is the system which denies the common law Trial by Jury. Trial-by-judge is the National Socialist (NAZI), Stalinist, Soviet, fascist and communist system of judicial oppression, by which primitive tyranny thrives; massive injustices are routinely enforced on innocent people; and citizens are intentionally put into permanent fear and servitude.
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