In one juror’s trajectory, both the strength of the jury system and the fragility of the rule of law are exposedFormer President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York, on May 30.I find myself, amid the hurricane of coverage following the first criminal conviction of a former president in U.S. history, obsessing about Juror No. 2.
It is indeed a stunning vindication of the jury system, and of the core insight that underlies it: that a randomly selected group of ordinary folk, relying on their own experiences, common sense and moral intuition, may prove to be a more dependable barometer of justice than a panel of experts. But what the experience of Juror No. 2 may remind us of is the corollary: that it is only when those ordinary folk come into contact with the dread majesty of the law – sitting together in the quiet gravity of the courtroom, with the fate of the accused in their hands – that they become such Solomons.