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RE: Is Hive Watcher's doing a good job?
Alright. Thanks for clarifying.
They certainly reflect their societies, which includes the bad with the good.
True.
Have you ever been a member of a jury yourself? Or do you know someone who was?
We don't have that in Germany. What we have, is this:
In Germany and Austria, lay assessors (from the Old High German sceffino, the one who orders) are honorary judges who take part in the main proceedings of criminal trials.
Unfortunately, the wiki-entry does not translate into English. If you are interested, you must translate it yourself. I wasn't knowing about the "Schöffen" myself. I only knew the word and vaguely what it could mean. I was surprised when I read that you can act as a lay judge in court and that your vote actually counts just as much as that of a professional judge.
Well, juries in the US can actually rule that the law is the problem, not actions of the defendant. It's called Jury Nullification, and judges hate, hate, hate it. They often caution juries, dismiss attorneys, and start trials over if jury nullification is mentioned. They've even muzzled defendants so they can't speak out of order at trial. American juries are yet one of the most powerful vestiges of actual democracy left in the country, since voting at the national level is merely a ritual and ballot box stuffing or burning the ballots of the challenging candidate tend to decide elections where more than a few million dollars are spent on the contest. Small local elections are both more effective in controlling local polities, and more likely to be decided by the actual voters, because there's less money involved, and teams of ballot farmers cost too much.
Thus, when the wrong candidate gets in office and passes bad laws, juries have authority to nullify such laws during trials of people accused of breaking them, as well as declare the defendant guilty or not guilty. I think very highly of juries, but have been disappointed with jurors, because so many of them aren't very competent to understand technical issues, are bamboozled by their indoctrinations and propaganda, or aren't very attentive or courageous when human rights are violated by laws and courts.
I have been on juries, which is where I formed my opinion.
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