Though they can take very different forms from each other, a people's jury or citizens' jury generally aims to provide an opportunity for people to express an informed view on a subject according to their own principles. The jury is made up of people who are normally drawn at random from a local population. An example, which occurred in Oxfordshire in the late 1990s, was the use of a People's Jury to resolve where to site a waste recycling plant. A group of twelve people was selected, as though they were going to belong to a legal jury. They were then taken on a guided tour of the county and introduced to experts in various fields. After they had been given the opportunity to perform sufficient research, they were asked to choose the site to use. Oxfordshire (abbreviated Oxon, from the Latinised form Oxonia) is a county in south-east England, bordering on Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire. ... A jury is a sworn body of persons convened to render a rational, impartial verdict and a finding of fact on a legal question officially submitted to them, or to set a penalty or judgment in a jury trial of a court of law. ...

In a "do-it yourself" style of citizens' jury, the jurors even decides the subject that they will be discussing for themselves. Whatever the subject, the jury then hears from specialists with different perspectives.

There is no "guilty" or "not guilty" verdict, because it is an issue and not a person that is on trial. If seen to be a fair and informed process, the citizen's jury comes to be seen as important. Decision makers and/or campaign groups take action on conclusions. The launch of the verdict attracts publicity.

All sorts of parallels to the citizens' jury have existed through many different civilisations. But the obvious precedent is the jury in court proceedings.

In Britain, the document known as Magna Carta laid down a citizen’s right to be tried before a jury of their peers in the year 1215. Early jury trials suffered from a lack of safeguards against bribery and bias among jurors, and the judges who oversaw the process. Magna Carta Magna Carta (Latin for Great Charter, literally Great Paper), also called Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Freedoms), was an English charter originally issued in 1215. ...

The right of a jury to bring in a verdict opposed to the directions given by the court was established by a particularly brave jury during the trial of William Penn in London in the year 1670.

Benefits of the jury model

The jury system is used in several former British colonies such as the US and Australia, as well as being taken up by other European nations such as Belgium, France and, more recently, Spain and Russia. The law of the United States was originally largely derived from the common law of the system of English law, which was in force at the time of the Revolutionary War. ...

Whilst elected governments make the laws, it is juries that are able to decide the innocence or guilt of anyone charged with breaking those laws, making them a key instrument of participatory democracy.

Over the centuries juries have achieved an importance to many democracies, yet their powers have often had to be fiercely defended. One senior judge surveying the power of juries to limit Government power over the centuries compared the jury to: "a little parliament... No tyrant could afford to leave a subject's freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen... 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". Lawyer, Jeff Abrahamson, suggests that "no other institution of government rivals the jury in placing power so directly in the hands of citizens, or wagers more on the truth of democracy's core claim that the people make their own best governors".

Benefits of a citizen's jury

A citizens' jury can make a difference because it can show what an informed group of everyday people think about a particular issue. If the jury process is robust, thejury' verdict will have strong moral authority and potential influence.

Often, decisions are left to experts or leaders of society. But members of the public have views which need to be considered. Opinion polls or focus groups are a shallow way of getting people's views, because they are too brief, and because people may not know all the information they need to make up their mind.

Citizens juries allow people to hear lots of different perspectives, but also to have time to think among themselves. Recently, re-designed "do-it-yourself" citizens' juries have allowed people whose opinion is being sought to set the subject for their discussions themselves.

Whilst the idea of People's Juries has been hailed as being of great benefit in a democracy, some have pointed out that the jury's recommendations may not be the same as those reached via a referendum of the population in general. However, unlike the referendum, where the views of the most uninformed or ill-informed people carry equal weight, a People's Jury is making an informed judgement.

External links

• Film about the UK GM Jury
• The locals know what they need
• Deliberative Democracy and Citizen Empowerment
• An academic review of citizen's juries, published in the journal Social Research Update
• Map of all citizen's jury - type exercises conducted on the subject of GM crops