the lawyers
with anxious expectancy. There is an electric thrill in the air. In
some mysterious manner their verdict becomes known before the foreman
speaks. Call it thought transference, mind reading, or what you will,
there is a quick understanding from their faces, their manner of
walking in, and their final pronouncement is only a confirmation of
what was expected.

The jury has spoken, the lawyer who has lost moves to set aside the
verdict. The jury looks startled. Is it possible that after all that
trial and all that deliberation the judge is going to upset it again
and have the long trouble gone over. The judge denies the motion or
takes it under advisement. Only on rare occasions does he set the
verdict aside then and there. The verdict must have been outrageous,
absurd, clearly a compromise, or absolutely and shockingly against
common sense. The theory of the law is that the verdict of a jury is a
final judgment on the facts by the best judges of the facts. It will
not lightly or for small reasons be interfered with.

The question of belief in the jury system is one of the most futile of
all large questions. In the first place, jury trial is so deeply
engraved in the constitutional bill of rights that one might as well
ask: "Do you believe in citizenship?" "Do you believe in the United
States of America?" Secondly, trial by jury is so completely involved
in the present system of court trial and procedure, that they are
inseparable. The evils of the whole attach to the part and the
beneficent aspect of the courts pertain equally to jury trials.

Coming down to a concrete case and leaving the abstract principle to
the theorist, there are certain obvious things to be said for and
against jury trial. The jury represents the opinion of the common or
ordinary man--the _vox populi_. Twelve men picked at random are
probably neither all capitalists nor all laborers. They are made up
of a few of both, but the majority, if not all, are the small
tradesmen or the great middle class. These men are not ignorant,
prejudiced, or unintelligent. They have a limited experience, but
their judgment is the judgment of mediocrity and mediocrity is what is
wanted. The professional man, the expert, the specialist is needed for
the special degree of administration, but for the determination of the
actual right and justice, what is needed is the instinct of the
ordinary man,--the plain ordinary common sense.

When the criminal says: