Jury Duty
Dennis Hackethal started this discussion about 20 hours ago.
Activity@zelalem-mekonnen shared in my Twitter space that he has been ‘summoned’ for jury duty. It seems strange and incompatible with freedom that the courts can just ‘command’ you to perform a service for them.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.A duty is an unchosen obligation. It’s an expression of mysticism. Immanuel Kant is responsible for spreading this anti-concept.
Rand defines duty as "the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority." Can one completely remove duty from their worldview? In other words, can one completely remove oneself from doing things as an obedience to a higher authority, imagined or real?
If the authority is real, one might still decide to do the thing by rationally deciding not doing it has consequences.
Yes, unless one find the action fun (like I find jury duty fun). If I didn't find it fun, I'd argue I am in the right for doing things to get out of jury duty.
One has the right to do things he find interesting, no matter how trivial.
Force means you get a bunch of people on a jury who don’t want to be there. This either introduces friction because they will drag their feet, or they will just vote for whatever outcome will get them out of there the fastest, which isn’t necessarily justice. For example (emphasis added):
[A] guy said to use the opportunity to fight back against laws you don't agree with. I thought about doing that even though we were asked if we could put personal feelings aside and enforce the law and I didn't want to be the one to say I couldn't so I stayed quiet. Then I thought, “What if I'm the only juror who thinks the law is unjust”? “Do I really want to drag this out just to fight the system”? I decided to make my decision based solely on whatever would get this over with the quickest. In this particular case a guy was charged with crimes that I don't think should be crimes anyway. Since I know the majority of people in my community feel the opposite, I chose to keep my opinion to myself for fear of ridicule of people knowing my feelings.
… I'm supposed to report for jury duty tomorrow. I hope it gets cancelled or I'm not chosen but if not, I'll [do] whatever I have to to get out of there the fastest.
You want people who don’t care. You need neutrality.
Force means you get people who don’t care about justice. For example (emphasis added):
Another issue that makes me a bad juror is I simply don't care. Unless someone does something to me or someone I care about, I don't care. If someone had done something to me or mine then I couldn't be a juror for that trial anyway. If John Smith steals Jane Doe's car, I don't care. Even if John Smith kills Jane Doe's [sic], I don't care. I think killing someone is wrong but if it doesn't effect [sic] me personally I don't care what punishment they get. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
[I]f you’re on trial, you can force the state to use a jury to decide the facts of the case.
So it’s a trade off - if you have the right to a jury trial, so also do you have the obligation to serve on a jury for a person who has chosen a jury trial.
Otherwise, you get what’s called a “free rider problem”, people who refuse to serve on juries still insisting on a jury trial if they’re on trial.
People say the same thing when it comes to police services and the fire department. The solution to the free-rider problem is to not provide the service to people who don’t pay.
But then some people might not be able to afford a jury trial.
Yes. Juries don’t grow on trees. If you want a service, you have to pay for it.
By the same logic, we should force people to produce food for free, because there might be some people who can’t afford it and would starve.
Ironically, countries that nationalized food production have historically starved millions to death, while countries where food production is purely voluntary and only done in exchange for payment feed their populations best. In the latter countries, food is good, abundant, and cheap.
There are loans, charity, insurance, etc.
People are ordered to appear for jury duty simply because, if it were a toothless request instead, hardly anyone would show up.
Nonsense. If you persuade people, make it worth their while, they will show up in droves.
If jury duty were required for a free society to work, that would mean some people would have to be enslaved for a while to ensure freedom for everyone else. In other words, freedom would require some amount of slavery. That’s contradictory.
I think [the inner workings of the justice system are] goddamned impressive. And humbling. And when I get a summons to serve? I go. Because both “the People of the State” and that “John Doe” deserve my best effort. I would expect it if I was ever on the wrong side of that -vs- and I would hope that you would too.
Why does John Doe deserve your best effort? He’s a random stranger to you. Why should you care what happens to him? What has he done to deserve your effort and consideration?
This sounds like sacrifice/altruism.
https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sacrifice.html
https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html
Who would subject themselves to that [gruesome] experience [of being a juror] voluntarily? The difficulty of finding volunteers alone means that jury duty must be mandatory. And if it were voluntary, it wouldn’t be fair for those who did serve.
The difficulty of finding volunteers alone means that jury duty must be mandatory.
Not necessarily. It might just mean that courts suck at persuading people to be jurors.
… if it were voluntary, it wouldn’t be fair for those who did serve.
By that ‘logic’, we never could have abolished slavery. What a stupid argument.
[Jury duty is] part of your contract with the country.
There is no contract with the country. A contract implies consent, the freedom to sign or not sign. A forced signature is null and void.