Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1919 — What Historians Say About the Jury System as to the Facts Concerning Origin [ARTICLE]

What Historians Say About the Jury System as to the Facts Concerning Origin

Many writers of authority, according to Canon Stubs, have maintained that the jury system is indigenous to England, some deriving it from .Celtic tradition, based on the principles of Roman law, and adopted by AngloSaxons and Normans from the peoples'they had conquered. Others have regarded it as a product of the legal genius of the Anglo-Saxon, of which Alfred is the mythical impersonation, or as derived by that nation from the customs of primitive Germany, or from their intercourse with the Danes. Nor. even when It is admitted that the system of recognition was introduced from Normandy, have legal writers agreed as to the source from which the Normans themselves derived it. One scholar maintains that it was brought by the Norsemen from Scandinavia; another that it was derived from the process of the canon law; another that it was developed on Gallic soil from Roman principles; another that it came from Asia through the crusades. The true answer seems to be that the forms of trial resembling the jury system are to be found in the primitive institutions of all nations.- —Brooklyn Eagle.