I do not trust judges, as a category, nearly as far as I can throw them. Judges are, as a rule, biased, trained in secularism, steeped in governmental power, blind to or participant in abuse, deferential to the government, and unexceptionally intelligent. As a rule, the jury is by far the superior choice; juries are typically less biased, less deferential to abuse, and less prone to using technicalities of law to avoid morality or common sense. But notice that I said, ‘Less.’ Juries are still thoroughly imperfect. As a rule, they still have pro-law enforcement biases, for instance, and pro-prosecution prejudices too. Juries, if to a lesser extent than judges, are deeply vulnerable to emotional appeals, to narratives, and to fudging the facts or the law to get a desired result. How can we fix this problem?

Solution #1

The first solution would be to get rid of sin. This, unfortunately, is not within the human compass; we live in a sinful world, till Christ returns to complete the sanctification (1 Cor. 15:26-28). It would also obviate the need for formal juries; the ‘disagreements’ subsequent to sinlessness would exclusively be miscommunications the parties would discover and remedy without assistance.

Solution #2

The second solution is to have the population convert en masse to consistent, enacted Biblical Christianity (and not the damning parodies too often peddled). In such a place, the law of God becomes the standard morality of the people, and the jury-quality goes up, up, up. God law, after all, requires judges (such as the jury members) to be just, to set aside prejudices in all directions (James 2:10-13), and to judge according to righteousness. It shifts the motivation of the jury from ‘vengeance’ or ‘punishing the criminal’ or ‘saving the victimized minority’ or some other improper desire, shifts their motivation to ensuring justice, whether that it punishment or acquittal.

Yet even in this society, a society-sample jury has problems. We recognize these to some extent in our current system; nobody is enlisting toddlers to the task (yet). As Christians, we should recognize that not every Christian is prepared to undertake so serious a task as determining whether a man lives or dies; the immature Christian, immature by age or by recent conversion or by long recalcitrance, is not equipped to live up to the law. Of course, no man on this earth is perfect at that (1 John 1:8-10), but we should be seeking for those best equipped to the matter.

We should also, as Christians, recognize the authority allotted to different person by God. The pattern of Scripture is to place men in positions of leadership in the church (1 Tim. 2:12), the family (Eph. 5:25-33), and the state (Prov. 31:23). The role of the woman is in a different sort of stewardship. God being the Creator, moreover, we should expect men to be more suited to leadership in these fields than women, just as women are more suited to their provinces (which extend far beyond child-bearing or even child-rearing, though that is as much the center of the female vocation, under God, as family leadership (including of the children) is at the center of the male vocation, as a rule (with exceptions, like Paul of Tarsus)).

Solution #2.1

Voir dire in certain parts of the United States uses a ‘respected persons’ model, and here we see probably a remnant of what the Biblical recommendation for jury composition accounts for. We see the mature, those equipped by life and by God for the task of judging their fellows, skilled in the law and knowledgeable as to both life and persons (the better to judge witnesses).

The Old Testament solution, never rescinded by the New Testament and actually implicitly endorsed, was the council of elders. It is this group which sits in judgement at the gates in Ruth 3-4, in Proverbs 31:23, and elsewhere. They are not sufficient for all tasks, as Leviticus 17:8-13 allows for by establishing an appeals court around individual ‘judges,’ appointed to the task (the role which the judges of the book of Judges probably held in many cases, albeit with sad mutation at times), aided by the counsel of a theological expert. But the council of elders, holding court in the most public possible way, standing by the city gate where by definition all non-criminals could come without fear in peace-time.

This publicity demand, I will note, is one modern courts loathe to comply with, despite the American tradition of openness in courts. Legislatures would be righteous to make live-streaming and public archives thereof mandatory in most courts. They are unlikely to do so, though, and judges are unlikely to like it, as it would expose a hideous amount of abuse of power, would show off much immoral or illegal.

The New Testament adds to the Old Testament practice what was implicit in it: criteria for selecting elders. Under the Old Testament regime, the standards would not be hard to discern. The goal being wisdom, righteousness, experience, and trustedness, men of good reputation, long residence (‘elders’ speaks to age!), known virtue, and demonstrated good fruit would be preferable, though of course the actual persons chosen would too often qualify not at all. Titus 1:5-9 codifies these traits, declaring that the elder (not, despite common interpretation, merely the ecclesiastical elders, though full societal integration would necessarily be hindered by a largely pagan society) must be above reproach (trustedness), husband of one wife, father to Christian children (fruit!), and known to be righteous both in conduct and in doctrine (wisdom; righteousness).

The common response to this passage and its ilk, in the New Testament, is to confine their direct application to the church, viewing them as at most vague ‘qualifications for leaders.’ But we should observe that Titus never confines eldership to an ecclesiastical role. The ‘elder’ of the Old Testament undoubtedly served an ‘ecclesiastical’ role, not to the Temple (which is the predecessor of Christ’s intercession, not of the New Covenant church) but as leaders of the people in their local congregations (synagogues) (Ex. 12:3-4). But they were the civil leaders of Israel as well, an office the New Testament does not rob from the office in continuing it.

The New Testament, it is true, does not much speak directly to government, particularly not to Christian as civil magistrates. The historic context, after all, was of a people under Roman domination; they had no Christian state (and only the dying remnants of a Jewish state, one which was nearing its end, as per Matthew 24). Christians needed to instruction in how to live in regards to the Old Covenant and with their neighbors much more than they needed instruction in civil government. That instruction, after all, was already largely complete in the Old Testament law, even if the New Testament would refine it by implication.

Nor did the early church refrain from applying the Old Testament measures outside the ecclesiastical. 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 has often been used to prove that Christians should never go to the courts for remedy (contrary to the Old Testament precedent), but to a careful reading, it discloses Paul’s expectation that a functional body of believers (not necessarily or properly the institutional church) will establish for itself a pseudo-judicial system, governed by consent, when one is lacking, a means of internal reconciliation (as fits to Matthew 18:15-20).

In verse 5 (1 Corinthains 6), Paul asks, “Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers…?” By implication, Paul calls on the Corinthian Christians to find among themselves wise men- elders- who can arbitrate and judge the cases internal to the church. (In a functional society with Christian predominance, however, such a court already exists and is integrated into (foundational to) the civil government, as we see in the Mosaic legal mandate.) Paul is thus prescribing this eldership system to the church as a part of spiritual health under the New Covenant, rather than condemning it as outdated for the people of God to engage in civil government via the eldership.

Conclusion

The jury system has a propriety to it which justifies the American and English affection, but the jury system is also badly flawed in a society which lacks systematic Christianity and a Biblical method for seeking Biblical wisdom. Recognizing and carefully (explicitly) implementing into our juries the Biblical standard for elders remedies much of the fault and bias now endemic to our juries, a bias which becomes an easy excuse for the judiciary to grow their role in the court, being ever desirous of more power, being themselves more biased, more unilateral, and more united in a specific direction of evildoing. We must take Scripture’s situation- or keep suffering the consequences (Hag. 2:10-19).

God bless.