The British, who have had the system for 800 years, look on it as just part of
life. They do not appear to resent the system. They just carry it out. Some people
may want to abolish it but most Brits want to keep it.
The USA, who have had the system for 400 years, also look on it as just part of U.S.
life. They regard it as their patriotic duty.
However, being Americans, that does not stop them from joking about it.
Why has some countries got rid of its Jury System?
Many countries became independent of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. They nearly
all started with the British legal system that had the Jury System.
Some of these countries abolished the Jury System following independence. The
main ones are Singapore, Israel, Pakistan, Malaysia, and all African countries.
Their governments were fearful of “the danger of jurors untrained in the legal
profession delivering verdicts”.
This is the same excuse our Filipino objectors offer. However, it is worth looking in more detail at two successful ex-colonies.
Singapore
If a country like Singapore abolished the Jury System, they must have had a good reason.
Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his memoirs about the jury system as he found it:
“I had no faith in a system that allowed the superstition, ignorance, biases, and prejudices of jurymen to determine guilt or innocence”
In effect, he wrote: – “I ran the justice system and those I deemed inferior to me or other lawyers, had no place in it!” He sounds like a dictator, doesn’t he?
Israel
The one colony that Britain did not try to introduce the jury system into was Israel.
The reason Israel never had jury trials was that the British had concluded that with Jews and Arabs living as two mutually hostile communities, jury trials would not have worked in Palestine. This situation continues today.
The Jury System breaks down if the community contains factions that are violently opposed to each other.
However, this can be overcome. The main example is the situation that African Americans were in, in the southern states of the USA during the segregation years.
They were denied fair trials under the Jury System for 100 years.
But a key electoral reform in 1964 changed all that; the jury system survived; and is working fine now.
To the Jury System abolitionists, WPJI rejects all the personalities and arguments of governments that rejected their Jury Systems.
Lee Kuan Yew was a brilliant Cambridge University scholar. All prominent Filipino politicians parrot his message – which was:
“I am more powerful than you, as I am better educated.
You must do what I say. You must also look the other way if I break the law”.
“You are powerless”.