The jury's task in a criminal trial is to determine guilt or innocence based on the uncontested facts and the evidence (In the USA, I gather they can also recommend a verdict). That doesn't leave a lot of room for the jury to decide which laws ought to be enforced.
I suppose it's reasonable for a jury to decide that a prosecution should not have been brought, even if the criminal act can be shown to have occurred. I don't know what other body is in a position to make that determination, so I guess that in some kind of "natural law" view, returning an innocent verdict when the facts say guilty, is morally permissible.
But I'm not OK with juries deciding what the law is, or just completely ignoring the law. My experience (IANAL) is that jurors are interested in the judicial process, assess evidence carefully, and try hard to return a "correct" verdict.
I haven't served on a real jury; I did serve on a mock jury, in a mock trial for training advocates (barristers). It was a date-rape trial, and the "evidence" was equivocal. Interestingly, although all the jurors were sincere and honourable, the jury split male/female on the verdict (I'm a male, and I came down on the male side of the split).
What is even the point of a jury composed of laymen if their only task is to decipher if a law has been broken? Surely at that point you'd only want lawyers, as in, people with a professional understanding of the law.
As I understand it, juries explicitly decide whether the law has been broken purely on the basis of what they determine the facts to be. The system is explicitly set up so that no specialist legal knowledge is required - the jury instructions from the court will be along the lines of "if you decide that things x, y & z are true, then you must convict".
Juries are finders of fact - that is, when Bob says one thing, and Bill says another thing, it is the jury's job to decide who to believe.
Lawyers instruct juries on the law - "If you believe Bob's account (or, typically, something a bit more specific), then Bill is, by law, guilty of XYZ."
There are "facts" and facts. The undisputed facts are those where both parties "stipulate" - neither party intends to adduce evidence that the claim is false. Juries aren't at liberty to make up their own minds about facts that haven't been disputed.
It's the disputed "facts" that juries weigh - that is, the evidence and testimony.
> Lawyers instruct juries on the law
That's rather slippery; I think that technically, the lawyers are "servants of the court", so they really instruct the court on the law. And "the court" means the judge. The judge then instructs the jury on the law.
But in fact, these lawyers are advocates; their business is to expose those parts of the law and the evidence that are advantageous to their client, and damaging to their adversary. It's not reasonable to assume that the judge is unbiased (any more than the advocates).
The task of the jury is the interpretation of the various evidence to decide the facts of the case. The task of the lawyers is to present the evidence. The task of the judge is to decide the law of the case.
> The task of the judge is to decide the law of the case.
I don't think that's right.
You express that as if "the law" is always clear and uncontestable. Reality is the opposite; few laws are drafted to be clear and uncontestable.
The task of the judge is to administer the case. He/she decides what evidence is admissible, what utterances by the advocates are forbidden/permissible and so on. The advocates and the judge may have three different opinions about what the law is, and so it becomes a question for the jury.
So the judge is the authority on the law concerning how cases may be conducted; but not on other legal specialties.
Funnily enough, the lawyers present in the courtroom routinely arrive at a disagreement on this point. For some mysterious reason, the lawyers hired by the accused will routinely find that no law was broken, whereas the lawyers hired by the accuser will routinely find that laws had been broken. So perhaps your suggestion of lawyers deciding on verdict has some issues?
> bench trials are successfully conducted throughout the world
True, for some value of "successful". A bench trial is much cheaper than a jury trial, and is much less likely to come up with the "wrong" verdict. Bench trials are characteristic of justice in authoritarian countries.
The jury's main task is to weigh the testimony of witnesses, I guess. That's not a technical matter, for lawyers to evaluate; it's a question of whether a witness is reliable, which is a judgement. I don't see why a trained lawyer is going to be better at that than a layman.
Because there's an old convention that then got written on a paper, that now says "a jury of your peers".
In terms of end-to-end "justice system" problems the inefficiency of a jury is a small problem. (As most cases never even see a courtroom. In criminal cases due to plea deals, in civil cases due to settlement, etc.)
Technically anything can be interpreted in two different ways by two people, so even if the judge gives very precise instructions to the jury, they still have a lot of freedom. (And this led to finding murderers not guilty, because the victim was black.) But a bunch of lawyers can be racist too, so that wouldn't have helped much.
> an old convention that then got written on a paper
That would be Magna Carta, I think. The word you're looking for is "parchment", not "paper". When it was drafted, it wasn't an "old convention" - it was an innovation.
I was thinking about the US constitution, as the convention was already old by then. Of course it's much better than having the local lord be the judge.
I suppose it's reasonable for a jury to decide that a prosecution should not have been brought, even if the criminal act can be shown to have occurred. I don't know what other body is in a position to make that determination, so I guess that in some kind of "natural law" view, returning an innocent verdict when the facts say guilty, is morally permissible.
But I'm not OK with juries deciding what the law is, or just completely ignoring the law. My experience (IANAL) is that jurors are interested in the judicial process, assess evidence carefully, and try hard to return a "correct" verdict.
I haven't served on a real jury; I did serve on a mock jury, in a mock trial for training advocates (barristers). It was a date-rape trial, and the "evidence" was equivocal. Interestingly, although all the jurors were sincere and honourable, the jury split male/female on the verdict (I'm a male, and I came down on the male side of the split).