A Citizen Jury in Action: Report from Morris Rural Climate Dialog

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Ahmed R. Teleb

Speaking of Citizen Juries, I’ve wanted to share something about this “Rural Climate Dialogue” since I attended as an observer last month in a small town in the Minnesota prairie. Below are excerpts from the participants. The the full report includes a statement to the public drafted entirely by the 15 randomly selected participants and an explanation of the CJ process as facilitated by the Jefferson Center.

Personally, I was quite impressed by what these regular people–the youngest a high school teenager, the eldest in her 80s–were able to do. They actually listened, engaged each other, and decided together. Unanimity was not required but almost always reached. Even their writing-in-committee was well done.

I was very impressed with this group’s ability to come together as community members, as neighbors, and talk about these things in an open, civil, and friendly manner.

I have to admit when I came here when people talked about climate [change] I thought ‘oh come on’ – did I ever learn a lot. I am grateful.

I think I’ll be a little bit more active and learn a little bit more in the future as a result of that. The overall experience was wonderful and the people were great.

We are the ones responsible for making these decisions…I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of a process that reminds me why this grand [democratic] experiment continues. And it’s not been perfect, and it will not be perfect, but we can always make it better, and things like this are a start. Thank you for the opportunity.

Filed under: Action, education, Experiments, Juries, Participation, Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 9 Comments »

Michael Schulson: How to choose?

Posted on July 15, 2014 by peterstone

A few weeks back, I was interviewed for an article in Aeon Magazine. That article, entitled “How to Choose? When Your Reasons Are Worse than Useless, Sometimes the Most Rational Choice Is a Random Stab in the Dark,” has now appeared online.

Some interesting sources cited in it (and not just my book…).

Filed under: Applications, Distribution by lot, education, Juries, Press, schools, Sortition | 1 Comment »

On trial: How juries reach their verdicts

Posted on July 7, 2014 by keithsutherland

The Sunday Times:


The film Twelve Angry Men depicts jurors changing their mind during deliberation (Kobal Collection)

A UNIQUE judicial experiment in which 12 separate juries watched the same trial and came up with different verdicts has led to new calls for an investigation of the jury system.

In the mock trial Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, played the role of an armed robber who stole £68,000 from a betting shop after threatening the staff with a shotgun. Vincent Regan, a film actor, played the role of a firearms expert.

The judge Michael Mettyear, the recorder of Hull and East Riding, who sits on the sentencing guidelines panel, came up with the idea for the experiment and real barristers presented the case. The juries were each put together by the 12 foremen, who were invited to take part by the judge.

“I thought it would be interesting to see if a number of juries listening to the same facts and evidence would come to different conclusions,” Mettyear said.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Juries, Press | 6 Comments »

The Vergne lotteries literature database

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Antoine Vergne has shared his database of lotteries related literature. The database currently contain 365 items touching on a variety of topics related to distribution-by-lot and sortition, covering theory, practice, history and advocacy, and ranging in time from antiquity to the present.

For those who are interested to access the list, it is available in bibliographical format and as a report.

The database is managed as a Zotero library. Readers who wish to help manage and extend the database are invited to leave contact information below or to email me (the address is here).

Filed under: Academia, Books, Distribution by lot, History, Juries, meta, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: | 5 Comments »

Benet Brandreth proposes selecting the legislature by lot

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Yoram Gat

In a 13 minute speech on BBC Channel 4 radio,

Benet Brandreth argues that our current political discourse is bankrupt, so he proposes a novel solution: a legislature by lot.

Below is my summarized transcript of Brandreth’s talk:

  1. Important things are difficult to understand. They can’t be debated using Facebook comments. They require thought, consideration, research.
  2. Political rhetoric is no longer about persuasion or debate of the issues but cheerleading. This is a symptom and a cause of a fundamental failing of our system of democracy.
  3. The politician doesn’t wish to persuade people but to say something that is pleasing.

    4. Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Juries, Press, Sortition | 29 Comments »

Belgiorno-Nettis: Forget democracy, we need a new way to govern

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis writes in The Age against elections. Here is an excerpt:

[S]uggesting elections are the problem is tantamount to sacrilege. In all the theatre of our media-driven, political drama, we’ve lost sight of the original and true genius of democratia: the jury. Today, we worship a seducer and an impostor – “a poll dancer” – twisting and teasing, writhing and squeezing.

In 2005, James Spigelman, the then chief justice of NSW, had this to say about elections and the jury: “The jury is a profoundly democratic and egalitarian institution. Selection by lot has two distinct advantages. First, it operates on the principle that all persons to be selected are fundamentally equal and that, in the relevant circumstances, it is invidious to say that one person is more qualified than another. Secondly, selection by lot prevents corruption of the system.”

With the help of research colleagues, we have been investigating better models of government: all based on the jury. The jury, in our view, is more representative, more deliberative and, surprisingly, more effective. We’ve done several projects that prove this over the last few years.

Filed under: Applications, Juries, Press, Sortition | 20 Comments »

Serve with pride

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Yoram Gat

sortition_stamp

Filed under: Juries, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Discussing sortition in Plymouth

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Keith Rossiter writes in the Plymouth Herald:

A COMMON cry from some Herald readers is that councillors are corrupt/incompetent/self-serving (delete as you wish), and above all that they should not be paid for their services.

[…]

Challenged to step up to the plate themselves, they may say – with some justification – that “it’s all a stitch-up”. You can only get elected with the help of a party machine, and parties only select their pals.

We got the idea of democracy from the Ancient Greeks, and perhaps it’s time to go back to Ancient Greece and borrow the other half of their brilliant concept.

The Athenians used a machine to pick people to hold public office or to do jury duty. The device, called a kleroterion, ensured randomness in allocating important civic positions in much the same way that a lottery ensures randomness in picking the winning ticket. (Of course, we’ve all met conspiracy theorists who claim that’s also a stitch-up.)
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Athens, Juries, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

BBC: The Philosophy of Russell Brand

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A recent segment on the BBC radio show Analysis is titled “The Philosophy of Russell Brand”. The audience is warned ahead of time to hold on to their hats as “Jeremy Cliffe enters a world without rules, without government, but with plenty of facial hair”. Following this introduction, and the expected sound bites from the Brand-Paxman interview, the segment talks about the attention Brand received, the Occupy/Indignados protest movement and features interviews with Paolo Gerbaudo, David Graeber, Michael Hardt, Peter Turchin, Daniel Pinchbeck, and a few friends of Cliffe.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »

The Jury’s Still Out

Posted on November 28, 2013 by keithsutherland

I recently completed jury service and wanted to share with this forum how it has affected my faith in the potential of randomly-selected legislative juries. I was impressed by the overall impartiality of the system – three sortitions in total (initial random selection from the electoral role, sortition from the jury pool (c.40) to a particular trial, followed by sortition from 20 potential jurors to the panel of 12 in the courtroom itself). I was pleased (and surprised) when the trial judge informed us that we were the judge of the facts, his job was merely to instruct us in the law. I was also impressed by the sample of citizens selected — it struck me as a reasonable cross-section of the general public, a wide variety of ages and backgrounds and a good level of general intelligence (much higher than I anticipated).

What about the deliberations and the verdict? The defendant was a director of a failed company who was accused of intent to defraud his creditors. Complex fraud trials are challenging for randomly-selected juries but this one only required a basic understanding of accounting terminology (balance sheets, trading P&L, solvency etc.). The jury deliberations, however, lasted for a couple of days and in the end we delivered a majority verdict which did not achieve the level of consensus required (10:2), so the judge stood us down, leaving the prosecution to decide whether or not to institute a retrial (at considerable public expense).
Continue reading →

Filed under: Juries | 47 Comments »

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