The American Experiment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The American Experiment - Essay Example Jurists make their deliberations under the cloak of secrecy hence it is very difficult to make out what happens in their discussion chambers. Legal policymakers have for a long time relied on untested intuitions on juries to make important decisions about both the scope and conduct of jury trials. However, empirical research on the functioning of the jury is gradually replacing this initial reliance on intuition, speculation, and anecdotes. There is a lot of information on the cognitive processing at trial as well as dynamics of jury deliberations. In their research study, Zeisel and Kalven try to explain why and how members of the jury make their decisions (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006). The authors refer to the whole jury system as an experiment but unfortunately with the conduct of serious human affairs. They describe how the Judiciary picks members of the Jury as one of the factors that make it an experiment. The authors state that the random choice of the Jurists and then the abrupt dismissal at the end of a trial makes it all the more experimental. They argue that most of the Jurists are not usually well versed with law terminologies and despite the Judge’s warnings; most of them often make their decision way early in the pre-trial phase. Zeisel and Kalven further state that the confidence in the jury system shows that the emotional and social aspects of the Jurists’ human nature were implicit in the formulation of this democratic ideal (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006). According to their research, Jurists use two main phenomena when making their decisions, that is the punished-enough theory and decisions that have race as their basis. On the punished-enough theory, the authors argue that most Jurists make their decisions basing on their emotions rather than logic and the legal instructions that the Judge reads out to them at the beginning of a trial. They further use actual court records