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06 March 2008 / Julian Samiloff
Issue: 7311 / Categories: Features , Legal services , Procedure & practice , Profession
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The bulwark of liberty

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Will someone rid me of this meddlestone jury?Now the coroner's jury is under attack, says Julian Samiloff

In the matter of the importance of juries, I tend to side with Sir Patrick Devlin’s comment that “the first object of any tyrant in Whitehall would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and the next would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for no tyrant could afford to leave a subject’s freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen. So that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives” (Trial by Jury, 3rd Edn 1966). The lord chief justice in Bushell’s Case 124 Eng Rep 1006 stated that the jury was “the bulwark of liberty”.

 

CORONER’S JURIES

Since 1927 a coroner’s jury has only been necessary in a minority of inquests. Juries are currently required under the Coroners Act 1988, s

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