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- Title
Jury Nullification: Features, Bugs, and the Possibility of Granular Law.
- Authors
Dane, Perry
- Abstract
Jury nullification is the ability of juries to acquit criminal defendants even against the apparent weight of the law and the facts. This commentary asks whether jury nullification is a "bug" or a "feature" of the American criminal trial, a question separate, for example, from whether it is good or bad. The commentary concludes, tentatively, that jury nullification, on one understanding, might be a "feature." In that understanding, jury nullification reflects the jury's authority, in exceptional cases, to particularize the applicable law by way of its existential engagement with a live defendant and the unique circumstances of a case. The possibility of jury nullification might therefore represent the legal system's implicit recognition that law can have a granular as well as a global quality. This power, if it exists, is necessarily controversial, though it has analogues in religious normative systems. Its embrace would require a more complex theory of law.
- Subjects
JURY; CRIMINAL trials; CRIMINAL defendants; JUSTICE administration; POSSIBILITY
- Publication
Law, Culture & the Humanities, 2021, Vol 17, Issue 3, p414
- ISSN
1743-8721
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/1743872118776381