BREXIT Means Restore Trial By Jury
The Right to Trial by Jury has been subverted to conform with EU law. Based upon the Napoleonic Code, the top down EU legal system allows state rulers to determine what law is without any effective bottom up checks upon their power. This suits the Eurocrat mentality: as Gorbachev stated the EU is the USSR in western clothes. Apart from the UK, Malta and Ireland, none of the other 30 or so states who are in or intend to join the EU uphold jury trial.
In legal systems based on jury trial a government may create unjust laws but citizens who break them may still be exonerated by a jury. That is to say the decision as to whether a law is just in application rests ultimately with a jury, not those in the pay of the government, be they police or judges. Consequently the Right to Trial by Jury comprises the last legal defence against the development of tyranny by stealth.
In 2013 The Right to Trial by Jury for libel was abolished. Journalists can no longer choose to be tried by a jury in cases where investigative journalism has unearthed news not to the liking of those in power. Furthermore retention of the European Arrest Warrant could ultimately mean Eurosceptics may be arrested to face a juryless trial in a ‘former’ communist state on a ‘xenophobia’ charge of insulting the EU in some way.
Laws subverting the Right to Trial by Jury will take time to repeal but bureaucratic decisions authorised as ‘secondary legislation’ can be changed more quickly. Among these is the manner in which jurors are selected. Since joining the European Community the traditional method of selecting jurors - in open court by random selection from a pool of registered voters - has been replaced by means of a central national computer. This undermines confidence that jurors are selected by a transparent, impartial method. You can help reinstate the traditional method of selecting jurors by signing our petition.