In the United states, the principle of jury nullification is a just check on government.

Let's try to keep this debate in the traditional LD format please. In doing this my opponent failed to provide a value/ value criterion to support his stance that jury nullification of not a just check on government. One definition that this debate needs to center on is check: An action or influence that stops motion or expression; a restraint. (yale.law.edu) The burden of the affirmative in this case is to simply prove that jury nullification provides a check on governmental power. As one can see, this has already been done. One must simply look to the case of Dr. Jack Kevorkian that I provided in my constructive; jury nullification was used, and due to having jury nullification, the power was taken from the government and given to the people. In doing this, my criterion of the social contract was upheld, as was my value of morality, as the people had to decide what was fair and morally right and so on. To move on to my opponent's case. . . My opponent stated in his point about jury selection that the "jury itself in it's nature is also full with bias since lots of them know little about the laws but act with emotions." Do we not regularly call upon juries to make the final decisions in a court of law? Even in cases where jury nullification isn't being used? The truth is, that we do: the jury IS a trusted stronghold within the justice system. Like I stated in my third contention, "While it is true that we elect legislators, not jurors, to pass laws, we continue to call on jurors to decide if even duly enacted laws remain worthy of enforcement." We have always called upon the jury to make the decisions of guilt or innocence in the courtrooms. We have trusted the jury with these types of decisions, and jury nullification is no different. The argument that my opponent is making is not against jury nullification, but against the juries themselves. According to Andrew Parmenter, author of Nullifying the Jury, "a more genuine argument against informing juries of their nullification power is that jurors will use it not just to ensure justice, but also to express bias. The example most often used for this proposition is the acquittal of white criminals who targeted blacks in the pre-civil-rights-era south. It is certainly arguable that juries informed, educated, and cautioned about their awesome and important nullification power are less likely to reach a verdict based on bias. If such a jury does acquit according to bias, the problem is not found in their unreviewable power to acquit, but in the jury selection process' failure to provide an unbiased jury from the start." So to turn my opponent's arguments against him, having jury selection prevents the bias from creeping into the nullification process. After all, both the defense and the prosecution work together to decide the jury, not just the defendants. So it seems to me that my opponent is proposing that we do not use juries whatsoever because they are uneducated in the way of the law. The jurors are given no more education, or no less, in cases where jury nullification will not be exercised. During the point where my opponent brought up that jurors abuse and use their power in their own belief, he provided a case in which a doctor was being tried because he grew marijuana for his patients, and in turn, he was in turn convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. This is exactly the type of case where nullification would be used! "In cases like this, I don't see how the jury could work as a power to enact on a supposedly 'unjust' court system." This is very close the same type of circumstance that Dr. Kevorkian faced when he was on trial. In his instance however, jury nullification was used, the jury protested the unjust laws, and the law on physician assisted suicide was repealed in the state of Michigan, due to the jury nullification. The jury was able to say that the law was no longer supported, the legislatures were able to hear, and they worked together to get the law changed. And finally, in my opponent's closing argument, he left you, the judges, with some rhetorical questions. "While arguing and criticize the justice system, my opponent maybe had forgotten, human are human, and in this case a normal individual in a room where the your word can decide a man's life, a person that may have no profession in law, a person that maybe driven mad by his belief and his opinion. Would you like to stand up there, my friends, to be judged and decided by those people?" In answer to that question, we already are judged by those very people. People who have no profession in law. People who may be driven mad by their beliefs and opinions. But in the end, with a jury nullification policy, it may very well be those people who save your lives. Judge David Bazelon says it best, "Trust in the jury, after all, it is one of the cornerstones of our entire criminal jurisprudence...the very essence of the jury's function is its role as a spokesman for the community's conscience in determining whether or not blame can be imposed."