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The U.K. Is Poised to Do Away With This Cornerstone of Western Jurisprudence

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  November 26, 2025 10:00 AM

The right to be judged by a jury of one's peers has long been a cornerstone of Western jurisprudence. It bars the government — the same government accusing you of a crime — from having total control by putting average citizens between the defendant and the state. It protects against authoritarian overreach and brings common sense and a reflection of community standards to the judicial process.

Juries have been used for centuries, including in Ancient Greece and Roman courts. In 1215, the Magna Carta established a jury trial as a principle of civilization. Since that time, English common law has made jury trials the norm, and the U.S. Constitution enshrines the right in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments.

But now it seems the U.K. is poised to do away with hundreds of years of legal tradition and will scrap most jury trials save for murder, rape, and "public interest" cases.

Of course, although they are recognized in the Magna Carta and English common law, jury trials are not part of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The push to abolish jury trials comes from David Lammy, the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

Here's more:

It would be one thing if, having decided that the jury was an institution not adapted to modern conditions, the Justice Secretary made the principled decision to abolish it. This view is not without supporters. Lord Bramwell, one of the most distinguished jurists of the Victorian period, once said that, “If juries had to give reasons for their verdict, trial by jury would not last five years.” In fact, it is a crime in England to disclose the deliberations of a jury, which to cynics only confirms the truth of Bramwell’s quip.

But this is Britain in 2025. Lammy needs to abolish juries because there is no money for the legal system, which means that courtrooms sit empty while criminal trials are scheduled for the next decade.

Juries are expensive and time-consuming; hiring judges is also expensive, but they aren’t messy like juries. They won’t collapse trials by going home and looking up the defendant online. They won’t acquit people who throw monuments into a river or people who post threatening things online about asylum seekers. For a Prime Minister who thinks ID cards are a sure vote winner, abolishing juries must seem like a quite clever thing to try.

Because there's always a post, we're not surprised to learn that David Lammy, just five short years ago, was a proponent of jury trials, calling them "a fundamental part of our democratic settlement."

Critics are calling Lammy's proposal the "biggest assault on our system of liberty in 800 years."

The new change means any offense punishable by up to five years in jail would be decided by a judge alone.

Here, this writer thinks of two men — Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny — who were both victims of malicious state prosecution for defending themselves against violent people. Rittenhouse was swarmed by a bunch of Leftists in Kenosha, WI. Rittenhouse shot three of them, killing two — Joseph Rosenbaum, who tried to grab Rittenhouse's firearm, and Anthony Huber, who hit Rittenhouse with a skateboard. The third man Rittenhouse shot, Gaige Grosskreutz, had a handgun that he was pointing at Rittenhouse when he was shot. Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment. On November 19, 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges by a jury.

In New York, Daniel Penny was on the subway when career criminal Jordan Neely began harassing and threatening other passengers. Penny restrained Neely, who later died. Penny was initially charged with second-degree manslaughter, and following the grand jury indictment, a charge of criminally negligent homicide was added. Last December, prosecutors dropped the manslaughter charge during jury deliberations because the jury was deadlocked. Prosecutors hoped this would let the jury focus on the lesser count of criminally negligent homicide. That jury also acquitted Penny.

Now imagine those two cases without juries. Undoubtedly, both Rittenhouse and Penny would be behind bars for a very, very long time.

Absolutely. As we saw here in Minnesota, judges can now simply overturn jury decisions they don't like.