I’ve been released from service at the county court house, and am back to the “real world.” I don’t particularly want to discuss what I’ve seen and heard in the past week, but I do want to mention something that bothers me.

Ever since I mentioned my “tour of duty” as a potential juror, I’ve received emails, contact form notes, and even telephone calls from folks giving me advice on how to, “get out of it.” While I’m the first to admit jury duty is generally not a lot of fun (I’ve done this before), it is I believe an important responsibility of the government we profess to hold up above all others. It frustrates me a little bit when folks seem to think serving this week away from normal life is somehow a “bad thing,” something to avoid at all costs. I can never seem to find the words to tell people why it’s so important to our very way of life to accept this small responsibility.

But one of the judges this week, in his thanking of the jury for its service, finally gave words to the feelings I have about this. He noted the right of trial by jury embedded within the Constitution, and mentioned some other routine things about the importance of the service we had just performed, and then said that the entire purpose of a jury of twelve normal citizens is the method by which the large decisions are taken out of the hands of government and placed directly into the hands of the people. The easy ones, he reminded us, are settled by the parties, or dismissed by the state. Only the most difficult proceed to trial, and those that proceed to trial by jury are the most difficult of all. And in those, the finding of fact is performed not by the lawyers, not by the judges, not by elected officials, not by appointed representatives of the government, but rather directly by the citizenry.

And that, it seems to me, is a seriously good thing, even if twelve average citizens are led to making decisions that may not be the most comfortable, or even the most palatable. We’ve lately seen a drift to allowing government to make decisions for us; sometimes the government doesn’t even tell us what decisions have been made, only telling us they are for our own good. The jury system is public, open, and takes the decision out of the hands of government completely, placing it firmly where it belongs - in the hands of the people.

I’ll cheerfully give away a week of my life every decade or so to see that continue and thrive, and I’d urge you to consider that the next time you are tempted to, “get out of it.”