ABSTRACT
It is generally accepted that the jury of ‘12 good men and true’ lies at the heart of the British legal system. The implicit assumption is that the presence of 12 ordinary laypersons, randomly introduced into the trial procedure to be the arbiters of the facts of the case, strengthens the legitimacy of the legal system. It supposedly achieves this end by introducing a democratic humanising element into the abstract impersonal trial process, thereby reducing the exclusive power of the legal professionals who would otherwise command the legal stage and control the legal procedure without reference to the opinion of the lay majority.
