“Jury — A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
“I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.”
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
Quoted in Fire and Ice: The Art and Thought of Robert Frost (1961) by Lawrence Thompson
1960s
1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 130.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)
“Those who have judgment use it as much as in judging stones as in judging men.”
Wakefield's Case (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 736.
"Anarchist's Progress" in The American Mercury (1927); § III : To Abolish Crime or to Monopolize It? http://www.mises.org/daily/2714
Context: Once, I remember, I ran across the case of a boy who had been sentenced to prison, a poor, scared little brat, who had intended something no worse than mischief, and it turned out to be a crime. The judge said he disliked to sentence the lad; it seemed the wrong thing to do; but the law left him no option. I was struck by this. The judge, then, was doing something as an official that he would not dream of doing as a man; and he could do it without any sense of responsibility, or discomfort, simply because he was acting as an official and not as a man. On this principle of action, it seemed to me that one could commit almost any kind of crime without getting into trouble with one's conscience.
Clearly, a great crime had been committed against this boy; yet nobody who had had a hand in it — the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, the complaining witness, the policemen and jailers — felt any responsibility about it, because they were not acting as men, but as officials. Clearly, too, the public did not regard them as criminals, but rather as upright and conscientious men.
The idea came to me then, vaguely but unmistakably, that if the primary intention of government was not to abolish crime but merely to monopolize crime, no better device could be found for doing it than the inculcation of precisely this frame of mind in the officials and in the public; for the effect of this was to exempt both from any allegiance to those sanctions of humanity or decency which anyone of either class, acting as an individual, would have felt himself bound to respect — nay, would have wished to respect. This idea was vague at the moment, as I say, and I did not work it out for some years, but I think I never quite lost track of it from that time.
“Anyone who makes up their mind about an issue before they hear the issue is a fool.”
“A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.”
Pt. 2, ch. 20
Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.