This accounts for the more or
less declamatory defences of this judicial institution, which is
no favourite with the criminal sociologist.
At the end of the eighteenth century, when there was a scientific
and legislative tendency towards the creation of an independent
order of magistrates, the French Revolution, mistrusting the whole
aristocracy and social caste, opposed this tendency, believing
enthusiastically in the omnipotence and omniscience of the people,
and instituted the jury. And whilst in the political order it was
inspired by classical antiquity, in the order of justice it
adopted this institution from England. The jury was not
unknown to the Republic of Athens and Rome, but it was
developed in the Middle Ages by the ``barbarians,'' as an
instrument which helped the people to escape from tyranny in the
administration of the law. It used to be said that the jury made
a reality of popular sovereignty, and substituted the common sense
and good will of the people for the cold dogmatism of the lawyers,
penetrated as they were by class prejudices. From this point of
view the jury was too much in accord with the general tendency of
the ideas of the day not to be greedily adopted.
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