《论美国的民主·卷一·第十六章下·陪审团作为免费的公民学校》第1节
Trial By Jury In The United States Considered As A Political Institution Since I have been led by my subject to recur to the administration of justice in the United States, I will not pass over this point without adverting to the institution of the jury. Trial by jury may be considered in two separate points of view, as a judicial and as a political institution. If it entered into my present purpose to inquire how far trial by jury (more especially in civil cases) contributes to insure the best administration of justice, I admit that its utility might be contested. As the jury was first introduced at a time when society was in an uncivilized state, and when courts of justice were merely called upon to decide on the evidence of facts, it is not an easy task to adapt it to the wants of a highly civilized community when the mutual relations of men are multiplied to a surprising extent, and have assumed the enlightened and intellectual character of the age. My present object is to consider the jury as a political institution, and any other course would divert me from my subject. Of trial by jury, considered as a judicial institution, I shall here say but very few words. When the English adopted trial by jury they were a semi-barbarous people; they are become, in course of time, one of the most enlightened nations of the earth; and their attachment to this institution seems to have increased with their increasing cultivation. They soon spread beyond their insular boundaries to every corner of the habitable globe; some have formed colonies, others independent states; the mother-country has maintained its monarchical constitution; many of its offspring have founded powerful republics; but wherever the English have been they have boasted of the privilege of trial by jury. They have established it, or hastened to re-establish it, in all their settlements. A judicial institution which obtains the suffrages of a great people for so long a series of ages, which is zealously renewed at every epoch of civilization, in all the climates of the earth and under every form of human government, cannot be contrary to the spirit of justice.
注释摘要
托克维尔这一章最要紧的区分，是他开门见山把陪审团一劈为二：作为司法制度的陪审团，和作为政治制度的陪审团。他承认，若只从审判效率、查明事实的角度来讨论陪审团，尤其是在民事案件中，它的功用是可以有争议的。他给了一个历史理由，说陪审团起源时社会尚不开化，法庭的任务就是简单的事情——判断事实，而现在人际关系复杂到惊人的程度，知识化、理智化了，让几个随机选出的普通人…