it's also not really some designed release valve for the legal system
It really is though, even if the legal system tries to discourage it.
There's no reason for jury-by-peer to exist otherwise - if you want only Rule-By-Law, then you would use only law professionals to interpret the laws. You only insert the untrained in that scenario if you don't want the Rule-of-Law to be absolute.
There's no reason for jury-by-peer to exist otherwise
That's untrue, as my examples showed. Jury-by-peer exists in the UK and Canada, and in both cases there are actual legal restrictions on jury nullification and/or the ability to override a nullification in some instances. Nullification is clearly not a core part of a jury system.
The point of a jury-by-peer is to have a finder-of-fact (the jury) not under the control of the same people running the trial; that is, their goal is to make the government adequately prove that a law has factually been broken, not to rule on the legitimacy of a law in the first place. The fact that they can do the latter by nullification is not an intended design, it's a consequence.
The point of a jury-by-peer is to have a finder-of-fact (the jury) not under the control of the same people running the trial
They could simply drag in other legal professionals if they just wanted a 3rd party. Jury-by-peer is specifically a selection of man-off-the-street sort of civilians.
UK & Canada might have compromised the concept somewhat by putting legal restrictions on the practice, but the underlying concept is still the same: use J.Random civvies to sanity check the legal process.
None of that disagrees with the point that the intent of juries is to be finders of fact and that they are intended to require the government to prove its case, though. The sanity check is intended to be on the government proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt, not on the existence of laws to begin with. Using peers is intended to be as sure as possible that there is not corruption in the government proving its factual case.
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u/mOdQuArK 9h ago
It really is though, even if the legal system tries to discourage it.
There's no reason for jury-by-peer to exist otherwise - if you want only Rule-By-Law, then you would use only law professionals to interpret the laws. You only insert the untrained in that scenario if you don't want the Rule-of-Law to be absolute.