Regarding the purposes of the American jury system, the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago catalog an impressive list of aims, objectives, and principles that an assembled panel of jurors are to realize in practice and embody in theory. Thematically, some purposes are primarily concerned with immediate, practical outcomes, e.g., achieving fair and impartial justice, assessing evidence, and determining guilt/liability or innocence. Others tend to emphasize the philosophical and theoretical reasons for the existence and use of the trial by jury system, e.g., fighting corruption, giving the people a voice in government, improving the efficiency of the legal system, and serving as a proxy “school” for popular education in democratic principles.1 It is said that the system of trial by jury is “...older than the Republic itself.”2 As a cultural and political institution, the jury is perceived as a bedrock of constitutional government, a veritable “bulwark of democracy.” The essence of the trial system is guaranteed and provided for by way of the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 14th amendments and is purported as being indicative and representative of the American system of political organization, that is, a system of government where power is derived from the popular consent of the governed. As these things go, the very existence of criticism leveled at the trial by jury system generally, and the supposed purposes to which this system serves particularly, is evidence that in a variety of instances the jury system fails to achieve the aims for which it is employed to realize. Take for instance the argument for democratic involvement. It is alleged that the trial by jury is both a means by which non-specialist are able to directly participate in government and, simultaneously, this participation is a way of “educating” the public in our form of participatory democracy and increasing public confidence in government. If this principle is to maintain its elevated status, one must reconcile the fact that, on the one hand, confidence in government is languishing at an all time low and, on the other, dodging jury duty is something of a pastime. If participation in government is indeed what is purported as being, why do so many individuals prefer non-participation? Another criticism, which even at a cursory glance seems axiomatic, is the legitimacy of the proposition that twelve individuals selected at random, who more than likely have effectively no knowledge of the legal system nor no acquaintance with the special form of logical engagement unique to legal judgment, i.e., legal reasoning, can be relied upon to “discover truth” in the legal sense of that word. As Jerome Frank observed, this “...theory has it that the jury of not only finds the facts but, in its deliberation in the juryroom, uses legal reasoning to apply to those facts the legal rules it learned from the judge.”3 Clearly, it is a baseless assumption, however romantic or even necessary, to presume that a jury possesses requisite intellectual sophistication to adequately digest and analyze the facts of a case and the legal rules that are said to govern them, and then to synthesize that information into a coherent and intelligible verdict. One presumes that this may be the reason why jury deliberations are done in secret and that while verdicts are public knowledge the reasoning which leads to these verdicts are not. All things considered, however, it is apparent that trial by jury is an important and indispensable aspect of the American justice system. I do not hold to the idea that it is a “bulwark” of democratic government, at least not in the romantic sense of the word “democracy.” It can and should operate as a wedge between the accused and the State, that is, as a check on government power—a reality I am for more leery of than ignorant and naïve panel of jurors.