Originally you'd have twelve men from the neighborhood swear according to a formula as to your character and reputation. Later the jury took on a fact-finding role and the division of labor now familiar to use between juries (who find facts) and judges (who rule on law) developed. Juries were available for trial at law -- in the early days there was no sharp distinction between criminal and civil cases, In the late middle ages and early Renaissance there also developed courts of equity, where no juries were available, and where the common law didn't strictly apply; the judge sitting in equity was supposed to be fair according to a common sense of fairness.
In America, where most states statutorily adopted the common law up to some date or another, the division between law and equity was not abolished (depending on the state) till the early 20th century, and with federal law, until the adoption of the Fed. Rules of Civ. Pro. in, I think, 1938.
The 7th Amendment to the US Constitution preserves Americans' right to a jury trial in all cases where you would have had such a right under the common law -- which has given rise to a lot of entertaining litigation about whether if, for example, Title VII anti-discrimination law or CERCLA environmental law had existed under the common law system in 1789, it would have been a case at law or equity -- the issue being whether jury trials are available. (In the first case the answer was No until the 1991 (Bush I) Civil Rights Amendments.)
See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment07/01.html
It Europe the civil codes don't even provide for juries in lots of cases -- most civil cases, for example -- and judges have a much more central role. A Belgian lawyer told me that in Belgian criminal cases juries ere available only for murder trials, of which they have about five a year over there. Judges also have an investigative role, determining facts as well as setting forth the law in those systems. Almadovar has a wonderful movie about this among other things, I forget the title, High Heels, maybe.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Are juries mainly an Anglo-American thing, or are
> they in wide use elsewhere?
>
> Doug
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