An Essay on the Trial by Jury

This book, which was written in the 19th century, is as vital and significant today as the Constitution-and perhaps more important to the modern reader because of changes mad within the court system (but not the legal system) in the past century. This is a very short book, but covers a very important and neglected part of the limitations of Government power: the trial by jury. Jury trial rights predate the foundation of the United States, beginning with the signing of the Magna Carta in England in 1215. So the principles of jury trial were long established in the British Common Law upon which US Federal Law and most states (all but Louisiana, which is based upon Napoleonic Law).