Jury Duty Three. A Service for Amateurs.
http://ordinarysociology.com/2009/01/06/jury-duty-three-a-service-for-amateurs/
In a democracy the state works for the people through its agents. The professionals are agents. The jurors are the people–a sampling drawn directly from the whole. Unlike the agents who prepare through study and experience and then apply for jobs and receive regular salaries or wages and pursue careers in the courts and its agencies, the jurors are drafted for their period of service and then return to the people. Their wage received is nominal at best. There is no career aspiration here nor opportunity to become cadre–to find a full-time career through their service. You can’t get there from here. They have no choice but to express the public opinion and the common sense since these cultural moments reside in them. By being themselves they are everybody. This is not a perfect voice. It always takes the form of a probability distribution.
There is a paradox: the sovereign people assembled as jurors in court are subject to the supervision and instruction of the people’s agents. There is a circularity here–the people appoint the state and its agents who then draft people into juries and then supervise them. And around she goes.
