Juries

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): The most remarkable thing about the Chancellor’s Guardian interview wasn’t his unusual candour about the parlous state of the economy (“arguably the worst in 60 years”) but his admission that a year ago he had no idea of what was in store. In fairness to Mr. Darling – an intelligent and likeable man – he was in good company, for most economists and senior bankers hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold: “No one did. No one had any idea”.

However it was pretty damn obvious to everybody else (other than practitioners of the ‘dismal science’) that the nation was gorging on an unsustainable debt and asset price bubble and that the whole pack of cards was about to fall down. Why is it that expert political judgment is so out of line with what has been called the ‘wisdom of crowds’?

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): Imprint Academic’s new book series on political lotteries and citizen juries is launched this week. The series is our response to the growing sense that the institutions of liberal party democracy are damaged beyond repair.

The 1997 election was a watershed as it was quite obvious that Labour was prepared to say anything in order to win power. From then on political parties would no longer ‘represent’ anything other than the whims of a few thousand swing voters in key marginals, leaving everybody else, in effect, disenfranchised.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As OK noted last month, the extension of detention without trial to 42 days is not the only worrying measure in the Counter-Terrorism Bill which is currently making it's way through the Lords. Today's Times suggests there is mounting opposition to the drastic restrictions on inquests under the proposed legislation.

Lawyers, opposition MPs and pressure groups have told The Times that the move represents a fundamental breach of the right to a public inquiry into a death – a centuries-old mainstay of British justice. 

They said that a full-scale campaign is being prepared to block the provision, which granted the Home Secretary unprecedented powers to intervene in the workings of the judiciary.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The government will soon publish its plans for the Lords. By all accounts it will go for a wholly elected second chamber doing the same job that the current House of Lords does.

By refusing to make the Commons do a proper job, a second chamber will be needed to clean up the mess, if it can, on an everyday basis. I'm not talking about rejecting proposals like 42 days, which the reform will be designed to prevent. To be democratic it has to have experienced politicians elected to it. Hence it will be a 400 seat chamber elected by some kind of proportional method. Watch out for the party list system. If the Sunday Times is right, Straw will have thought up a nice wheeze to distract everyone by offering voters the powers of recall.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Counter Terrorism Bill continues its passage through Parliament today, with its second reading in the House of Lords.

Most of the controversy around the bill has focused on 42-day detention, but there are a number of other provisions that deserve serious scrutiny. Inquest has produced a briefing that focuses on part 6 of the bill, which it calls "a fundamental attack on the independence and transparency of the coronial system in England and Wales."

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Fascinating post by Dizzy on being on a jury and what he thinks about the experience - verdict positive. He points out something I'd not thought about, that a defense lawer can scatter inconsistent doubts around and a naive jury might be influenced by this without realising that an innocent defendant would have a consistent defense. One counter argument to this is that a good prosecution should be able to point this out. While the jury system comes out well, Dizzy says that "you could find quite a large number of guilty people acquitted". I'm sorry if it is "a lot" but a defining point about the jury system is that "beyond reasonable doubt" is designed to let off some people who should be found guilty. Why? Because, in their wisdom, our forefathers who created it understood that no system is perfect. Judges tire, juries are poorly influenced, lawyers are uneven (to put it mildly). Therefore, and this is the key point, given that we cannot get it right 100 per cent of the time we have a choice: do we send innocent people to jail in order to ensure that every guilty person is punished? Or do we let off some who are guilty in order to ensure, so far as we can, that no one who is innocent is found guilty?