Defendants, who were most often from the lower classes, were more likely to be convicted by these upper class jurors, who rarely knew the defendant or his or her family. Interestingly, these types of juries were used in the United States until the decade of the 1950s. Imagining the Law reminds us that plea bargaining has been used consistently since Roman times, and jury nullification dates to the 1300s. When Parliament became frustrated with its impotence to stop crime in the 1700s, it passed severe legislation elevating petty crime to hanging felonies. Juries refused to convict, much the way a jury today might refuse to send a youthful drug offender to jail for life without parole.
Cantor notes that the gentry class had a large role in shaping the common law.
Kings and aristocrats had little need for laws that protected rights and property. But the upper middle classes benefited greatly from the development of the rule of law. When English common law was taking shape, most lawyers were members of gentry families and understood that class's concerns. They guided the law to facilitate commerce-through land transfers during the feudal system breakdown and labor exploitation during the rise of the mercantile class and the Industrial Revolution. After the American Revolution, the activist torch of the common law was passed.