Alan Dershowitz Quotes

I have faith in the jury system.

Believe it or not, there are people who want to be on juries.

Petty juries, consisting usually of twelve men, attend courts to try matters of fact in civil causes, and to decide both the law and the fact in criminal prosecutions. The decision of a petty jury is called a verdict.

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

Now it is clear, that if the government can exclude, on account either of their opinions or feelings, any persons thus drawn by lot, the trial is no longer a trial by 'the country,' but only by a portion of the country.

I have great faith in the jury system.

Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.

It turns out umpires and judges are not robots or traffic cameras, inertly monitoring deviations from a fixed zone of the permissible. They are humans.

I have had it with people who are threatening me and my kids and my family over simply commenting on the law and criminal procedure, and respecting juries. Because they do work hard. They work way harder than I do; and they work way harder than the rest of those people making those peanut gallery comments.

We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, except possibly flipping a coin.

The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.

A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor.

I certainly believe it's over for the jury system, but we won't admit it for a while.

Juries must, of necessity, be governed, in reaching many results through inferences from other facts, by certain laws of nature and human reason. They are often obliged to infer one thing from another, and this, whether that other be a fact direct or circumstantial.

There are very few countries in the world where we have a jury system as we all know.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies

Trial by jury slows the wheels of justice.

The juries [are] our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.

I believe in the jury system.

Juries are the constitutional institution designed to protect ordinary citizens against the wealthy and powerful.

The jury system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice. The scrutiny of 12 honest jurors provides defendants and plaintiffs alike a safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.