How Cases Should Be Decided Essay Example for Free

How Cases Should Be Decided Essay From the discussions and court observations, it is my considered view that decisions of cases filed in court should be best determined by the application of judicially defined principles and legislative enactments and should not merely depend on ad hoc decisions made by juries. The concept of jury trial is as old as humanity. It is basically a proceeding in which decisions and findings of facts of a given case are determined by a jury. Juries, upon the other hand are selected to represent the cross-sections of the community (Hale Star V, McCormick, 2000, p. 20-21). Thus, juries are often regarded as â€Å"peers of the accused† because they belong to the same community where the accused also lives. Jury trial are designed to provide a means of interjecting community norms and values to the judicial proceedings by providing opportunities for the members of the community to validate and test the applicability of the communities statute. However, in today’s generation, taking into consideration the major changes in our society and including its emerging complexities, I posit that the jury system failed to catch up to the judicial needs of cases filed before the courts of justice. It is my considered view that decisions arrived by juries are no longer that applicable in today’s generation because I believe that the justice system should be composed of people who have deep knowledge and experience in the field of law. By using the jury system we are in fact placing the burden of judgment on the mind of an average and untrained citizen. Often times, persons selected as jurors have no legal expertise. In my visit to courts, I observed that the jurors are average citizens and I doubt if they really have an in depth knowledge in law and jurisprudence. Thus, having no sufficient legal knowledge, they can get easily swayed and persuaded by clever lawyers who trained themselves to confuse and mislead the jurors through their colorful languages and speeches. Another reason why I aver that decisions should no longer be placed to the hands of a jury is that, jurors have the tendency to be swayed by prejudice through application of racial considerations, gender orientations and biases. In the court trial I saw, I observed that the jurors are not at all diverse in race, sex or age. Thus, the fate of an accused or the person in court is left to the hands of a layman that is often guided by his own personal biases and beliefs regarding his own creed, religion, sex, age and race. Lastly, I believe that the jury system is no longer viable in today’s courts because of the realities that are present in the system, which is the picking of the jury is no longer as objective as it were before. Thus, more often we end up with jurors, just like the juries I have seen in my visit to courts, to be bored, without interest and just sitting there. Worthy taking note that the integrity of judiciary rests not only upon the fact that it is able to administer justice but also upon the perception and confidence of the community that the people who run the system have done justice. At times, the strict application of law may in fact, do justice but it may not necessarily create confidence among the people that justice indeed is served. Hence, in order to create such confidence, the people who run the judiciary, particularly the person or the people who will hear and decide the case, must not only be proficient in both the substantive and procedural aspects of the law but most importantly, they must possess the highest integrity, probity and unquestionable moral uprightness, both in their public and private lives. Then and only then, can the people, including the writer, be reassured that the wheels of justice in our country run with fairness and equity, thus, creating confidence in the judicial system. Reference Hale Star V, McCormick, 2000, Jury Selection, p. 20-21.