From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Jury Nullification
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:31:39 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <BuLDMF.BuF@world.std.com>, srm@world.std.com (Stevens R Miller) writes:
> ted@cs.brown.edu (Tony Davis) writes:
> >Didn't the founders have a second purpose?  The second role of the
> >jury is to protect the people from bad laws; juries would refuse to
> >convict those accused of unjust laws.
> 
> >I was hoping that
> >someone could cite the particular Federalist paper or other document
> >where the issue of nullification was explicitly discussed.
> 
> Well, I'll try to look it up.  I could be wrong.
> 
> Stevens R. Miller, J.D.		E-mail to srm@mw.sbi.com

              At  the  Massachusetts  ratifying  convention,  Theophilus

            Parsons explained  why a  Bill of  Rights was  not needed to

            protect the rights of individuals or the states:

              
              But there  is another  check, founded  in the nature of
              the Union,  superior to  all the  parchment checks that
              can be  invented.   If there should be a usurpation, it
              will not  be on  the farmer  and merchant, employed and
              attentive only to their several occupations; it will be
              upon  thirteen   legislatures,  completely   organized,
              possessed of  the confidence  of the people, and having
              the means,  as well  as  inclination,  successfully  to
              oppose it.   Under these circumstances, none but madmen
              would attempt  a usurpation.    But,  sir,  the  people
              themselves have it in their power effectually to resist
              usurpation, without  being driven to an appeal of arms.
              An act  of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law;
              and any  man may  be justified  in his resistance.  Let
              him  be   considered  as  a  criminal  by  the  general
              government, yet  only his  fellow-citizens can  convict
              him; they  are his  jury, and  if  they  pronounce  him
              innocent, not  all the powers of Congress can hurt him;
              and innocent  they certainly will pronounce him, if the
              supposed law he resisted was an act of usurpation.[25]
              

            Parsons assumed  that individual  citizens would not rise up

            alone  against   the  federal  government;  yet  clearly  he

            recognized that  "the people"  were within  their rights  to

            "resist  usurpation"  by  "an  appeal  of  arms."    Instead,  

            he  assumed  that  oppressive  laws

            would be  nullified by  juries refusing  to  convict  people

            accused of breaking unjust laws.

            ____________________
              25 Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State
            Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution,
            (New York, Burt Franklin: 1888), 2:94.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
There can be no peace as long as AB 2601 lives.
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.politics.correct,alt.censorship