One interesting and [possibly even true] thing that I learne...

One interesting and possibly even true thing that I learned in law school is that “a jury of one’s peers” was not, originally, meant to be an impartial jury. In medieval times, the idea of rounding up a bunch of locals to decide whether or not you did a crime was that they knew you; they would be more familiar with the facts and personalities than some professional representative of the distant king; they could evaluate your testimony and use their own contextual knowledge to figure out what happened. And so if you were notorious throughout your shire as a bad guy, and you were accused of something bad, the jury of local notables might figure you’re a bad guy so you probably did it, and that was entirely allowed and kind of the point.

Should your character be part of judging an individual action? Should the community be able to remove members it doesn’t like?

www.joshbeckman.org/notes/453794507