We currently see considerable pressure by various special interest groups to eliminate or diminish our jury system. We, as lawyers, need to resist this pressure. To diminish the role of a jury is to diminish the peoples' control over their own destinies and over their own government. Lay people fail to recognize the power they have when serving as jurors. This power is too often taken for granted and too often is avoided by well-meaning citizens when called upon to exercise such power.
Jury duty is tough and time consuming.
It is also critical to the effective operation of our criminal and civil justice system. Our courts are far too important to be left to the control of judges and lawyers. Litigants are entitled not only to the best qualified judges and lawyers available, but they are also entitled to the best and the brightest jurors available. All three components of our courts, that is, judges, lawyers, and jurors, should be of the highest quality possible. Most of the time, these three components work well, although any lawyer with experience has encountered poor judges, incompetent lawyers, and bad jurors.