One of the important differences between the civil law system and the common law system is the jury system. After the judge in the common law system transfers the case to the jury, the jury will make a decision based on the information provided by the judge.
It's hard to imagine that in a court full of legal elites, a group of legal laymen make decisions. As Blue and Gold lawyers say in the movie: They are a group of people who only know how to go home and watch cable TV... They don't even know what product liability is. The outcome of the trial seems to be in the hands of those who know the law better.
The jury system has always been criticized by many critics, who believe that its existence can only show the ignorance of people but not the light of the law.
In this regard, there is one scene in the movie that I am very impressed with. On the day of the final judgment in the civil court, Nick stopped for a long time in front of the statue in front of the courthouse as he walked into the courthouse. It was a bronze statue of Justitia, the goddess of justice. The Goddess of Justice is blindfolded, holding a sword and scales. The existence of the jury is the blindfolded eyes of the goddess of justice. Even though elite trials can ensure the efficiency of court trials, if there are no voices from all walks of life and there are no various criteria for judgment, how can we restore the truth? How to avoid rigging of trial results?
Lawyer Lorre made such a deafening question in the famous toilet debate in the movie: Just because they are human, they have a conscience. Even if you get them to cast the wrong vote against their conscience by uncovering their weaknesses, even if you win the case, you will always lose. Not this time, but the next time or the next time.
Under such a system design, both the prosecution and the defense regard "pleasing" the jury as an important task throughout the trial. They roused sympathy, sympathy, or anger among the jury by delivering inflammatory speeches. What's more, just like the blue gold in the movie, using excellent psychological knowledge and professional experience to create an industry chain specifically for the selection of jurors has achieved the effect of manipulating the results of the trial. This one-by-one strategy was better used by Nick in this case. But Nick's superiority lies in the fact that he enters the jury room, intensifying differences through machine contradictions and conflicts and isolating individual factions. This is an effect that is difficult to achieve by remote operation.
After the trial of this case is over, the precedent that the manufacturer needs to pay civil compensation in the shooting case is thus opened, which is obviously of great significance to the common law countries where case law is the mainstay.
At this point, I already have the answer to the question raised by the title in my mind, and let's talk about the movie itself.
The presence of the jury advisor at the beginning of the article serves no purpose other than to tell me that jury selection in this case is very important. The rhythm of the first half of the article is tense and hearty. But the dramatic conflict in the second half is not enough, there is a sense of strong declaration of justice, I don't know if it is an anticlimactic.
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