Anthony Kennedy Quotes

I have great faith in the jury system.

Trial by jury slows the wheels of justice.

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.

I believe in the jury system.

I have faith in the jury system.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

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

The ancient mode of trial by jury ... ought to remain sacred and inviolable.

We are not living up to Thomas Jefferson's idea of what a trial by jury means.

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.

In my mind, he was guilty of no error - he was chargeable with no exaggeration - he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

I've served on five different juries, and many of them were bonkers in their own way.

The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.

I would rather have my fate in the hands of 23 representative citizens of the county [the grand jury] than in the hands of a politically appointed judge.

there shall be in every court, three justices or commissioners, who shall sit with the twelve men of the neighborhood, with them to hear all causes, and to assist the said twelve men of the neighborhood in case of law; and that they the said justices shall pronounce such judgment as they shall receive from, and be directed by the said twelve men in whom only the judgment resides, and not otherwise.

The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power—to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the over- zealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of a judge.