“For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

— Lysander Spooner

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 5

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Lysander Spooner 30

Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist 1808–1887

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“I am sure from my experience of juries that, in a criminal case especially, they will obey the law as declared by the Judge; they will take the law from the Judge, whether they like it or do not like it, and apply it honestly to the facts before them.”

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“Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations.”

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Context: Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation towards the eternal right.

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Georgia vs. Brailsford http://www.friesian.com/jury.htm (1794)
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Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Martin v. Mackonochie (1878), L. R. 3 Q. B. 775.

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Lysander Spooner 30

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