26 Jan y 1808

Codification - Jury Trial

[...?] cutting

Juries judge of law

Under statute law especially in civil causes you have less need of a Jury, and at the same time, having /if you have/ the institution, you may derive more benefit from it, you may extract from it more of that use /service/ which it is in the nature of it to afford.

Under Statute law, the pretention is more palpably [...?] than under jurisprudential, the pretension that Jurymen are not proper judges of the law.

Under jurisprudential law this pretension can never be directed /without/ of [...?]. That /A law/ which has no existence nobody can understand /is nt capable of being understood by anybody/: consequently not by a set of Jurymen: to them /all/ it [...?...?] easily be opposed. For the same reason neither should it be intelligible to Judges: but forasmuch as /seeing that/ they belong to the class of those by whom what there is of reality[?] in it is made, inn every instance what little chance there is of its being understood by any body, is all on their side.

Under Statute law you may insist[?], one ought to insist boldly that in every case the Jury [...?] be not only an appearance but a reality judges of the law that the decision pronounced upon it /that the text of the law shall be presented to them/ shall be truly theirs.