id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
inlawrev-3717	Shepard, Randall T.	Jury Trials Aren't What They Used to Be	2005	8	.pdf	application/pdf	4031	216	59	On the other hand, Mark Twain once wrote, [t]he jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury. Emerging from earlier Prankish legal traditions, juries and jury trials, although fairly unrecognizable to modem eyes, had become common in England by the end of the twelfth century.^ Only about 300 year later, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the English jury trial had come to possess a basic form that we would recognize today.^ That basic form, and the ftirther refinements made over the course of the intervening years, accompanied the early English colonists to the North American continent and integrated into the colonial governments.^ Despite wide variations in its application, by the start of the Revolutionary War, jury trials in both civil and criminal cases had become an important right to citizens throughout the colonies.^ Indeed, among the numerous and weighty grievances against King George III listed in the Declaration of Independence was the complaint that he deprive[ed] us, in many cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury.' Having won the war for independence, the Founders sought to protect the fruits oftheir labor, among other things, the right to a jury trial.	cache/inlawrev-3717.pdf	txt/inlawrev-3717.txt