#juries

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Radical juries

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/22/jury-nullification/#voir-dire

I don't know if you've heard, but water has started running uphill – I mean, speaking in a politico-scientific sense:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting

By which I mean, the bedrock consensus of political science appears to have been disproved. Broadly speaking, political scientists believe that lawmakers and regulators only respond to the policy preferences of powerful people. If economic elites want a policy, that's the policy we get – no matter how unpopular it is with everyone else. Likewise, even if something is very, very popular with all of us, we won't get it if the super-rich hate it.

Just take a look at the gap between public opinion and policy outcomes: most people think "capitalism does more harm than good"; most Canadians, Britons and Australians aged 18-34 think "socialism will improve the economy and well-being of citizens"; 72% of Brits support a national job guarantee; the majority of Californians support permanent rent-controls; and most people in 40 countries want CEO salaries capped at 4X that of their lowest-paid employees:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/07/the-people-no-2/#water-flowing-uphill

The inability of the public to get its way isn't just an impressionistic view – it's an empirical finding, based on a representative sample of 1,779 policy outcomes, that politicians ignore the will of the people in favor of the will of billionaires:

economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

And yet, all over the world, we're seeing these irrepressible outbreaks of antitrust policy, aimed squarely at shattering corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting

It's a mystery. There's no policy that would be harder on billionaire wealth and power than vigorous antitrust enforcement (not least because preventing corporate concentration is key to preventing regulatory capture):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Certainly, there are a lot of merely obscenely rich people who are angry that the farcically rich people are screwing them over, and this class division between the 0.01% and the 1% has opened up some political space:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/09/elite-disunity/#awoken-giants

But that wouldn't be enough, not without the massive supermajorities of everyday people who are sick to the back teeth of being abused by corporations, and who are desperate for any outlet to strike back.

Take juries. Orrick is a big corporate law firm that represents the kinds of companies that might find their future in the hands of a jury in a state or federal courthouse. Orrick periodically surveys representative samples of people who show up for jury service to get a picture of their attitude towards the kinds of companies that can afford to hire a firm like theirs:

https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/Groundbreaking-Jury-Research-Reveals-US-Jury-Attitudes-in-a-Polarized-Society

Their latest report contrasts the results of a pre-pandemic 2019 survey with a 2025 survey of 1,011 jurors in California, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, New Jersey, and New York.

They found that jurors' trust in the court system has plummeted since 2019 (67% in 2019, 48% in 2025); hostility to cops has tripled (11% to 33%); anti-corporate sentiment is way up (27% then, 45% now). The percentage of jurors who believe that they should use the courts to "send messages to companies to improve their behavior" has risen from 58% to 62%; and 77% want to award punitive damages to "punish a corporation" (up from 69%).

And jurors are notably hostile to pharma companies, energy companies and large banks, but they especially hate social media companies.

It's no wonder that corporations are so desperate to take away our right to sue them, and why "binding arbitration" clauses that permanently confiscate your legal rights are now part of every corner of modern life:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/#by-clicking-this-you-agree-on-behalf-of-your-employer-to-release-me-from-all-obligations-and-waivers-arising-from-any-and-all-NON-NEGOTIATED-agreements

The business lobby has been trying to take away workers' and customers' and citizens' right to seek justice in court for decades, ginning up urban legends like "A lady's coffee was too hot so McDonald's had to give her $2.7 million":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

Don't believe it. The courts are rarely on our side, but the fact that sometimes, every now and again, a jury will seize an opportunity to deliver a smidgen of justice just drives plutocrats nuts. Billionaireism is the belief that you don't owe anything to anyone else, that morality is whatever you can get away with. You don't have to be a billionaire to contract a wicked case of billionaireism – but you do have to be stinking rich to benefit from it:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/20/billionaireism/#surveillance-infantalism

[thlmdamr]

1. “His pathological sexual needs certainly explain his motivation for committing these crimes, but they did not appear to cause him a ‘substantial lack of capacity’ for purposes of non-responsibility,” noted Dr. Frederick Fosdal, who evaluated Dahmer on behalf of the prosecution. “He admitted to being fully aware of the illegality, impropriety, and ‘unlawfulness’ of his behavior, and that he lived in ‘horror’ of being discovered. He described several steps and behaviors he took from which it can be inferred that he understood the unlawfulness of his conduct.” The other three doctors who argued that Dahmer was not mentally ill under Wisconsin law made similar arguments.

2. Intentional homicide in the first degree

3. Each of the fifteen charges against Dahmer in Wisconsin was listed in full for the juries.📋

"It makes me sick to see this man trying to evade what he did by saying he was crazy." -

Leslie Thomas, sister of victim David Thomas

Credit "ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕝 𝕆𝕦𝕥 𝕆𝕗 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕝"🧾

[transpondster]

Juror questioned ahead of the Sam Altman / OpenAI v. Elon Musk trial now underway.

[purpleweredragon]

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[gettothedancing]

Some say federalism is for Republicans and centralization is for Democrats. But if that idea may have had some salience at points in the past, it's hard to look around today and conclude that there's a right/left valence to federalism. Whatever the merits of the following ideas, notice that without federalism Colorado couldn't experiment with policies requiring a percentage of electricity sold in-state to come from renewable energy sources, and California couldn't experiment with more demanding animal welfare laws for livestock whose meat is sold in-state. As Professor Heather Gerken of Yale Law School observed in pointing to similar examples (such as the $15 minimum wage and the movement to put body cameras on police officers), "it is useful to remember that rights are built, not born. . . . And social movements are almost always built from the ground up, moving through local and state sites before hitting the national stage." California Sate Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu reminds us of a particularly poignant example. For decades before and after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, federal courts routinely upheld deeply unjust segregation laws as consistent with the federal Constitution. "What is lesser known," Justice Liu reminds us, is that "despite Plessy . . . between the period from about the mid-1800s to 1900, there were several dozen state court decisions about school segregation. More than half of those cases granted relief to the black plaintiffs, largely on state constitutional or statutory grounds, within the confines of Plessy." In fact, as Justice Liu continues, the road to Brown v. Board of Education was paved with state court decisions. So much that, "in 1955, when the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its disposition in the Brown cases, it reversed . . . three federal courts and affirmed . . . one state high court. I think that alone should give us pause in thinking about who are the heroes and who are the villains." The pattern more or less repeated itself when it came to racially biased juries. Again as Justice Liu notes, not long after Brown, the Supreme Court issued a decision that many lower federal courts interpreted as placing a "crippling burden of proof" on criminal defendants who sought to establish that they had been victims of unconstitutional racial bias in the jury selection process. A number of state courts, however, took a different view and applies a more modest burden of proof on state court defendants under their state constitutions. More than twenty years passed before, finally, the Supreme Court overruled its initial decision and moved federal law in the direction many state courts were already headed. In truth, the push and pull between national and local authorities that federalism allows has nothing to do with benefiting one part or another; it has more to do with the fact that no single government can always get it right. Protecting federalism means ensuring that when one government loses its way, another can help light the way back.

Justice Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze, OverRuled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law (2024)

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

An intro to jury nullification!

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009: The Scoreboards

C1R had opted for a simple clean scoreboard and graphics for 2009. Reminiscent of contemporary user interface design, all corners neatly round with everything fitting together simply. Spokespeople cam docked nicely on the right, the semi-final draw envelopes had also become virtual and had the same aspect ratio and rounded corners as the scoreboard.

It was exceptionally readable, even where they'd had to mess with letter spacing to fit 'Bosnia&Herzegovina' in on one line. Compared to some recent scoreboards, this one felt a little bare, but at the same time it also felt easy on the visual cortex as all that information zapped into your brain.

The envelopes in the semi-final were animated as well. Not only opening to reveal the flag of the successful country, but rotating around the central shot of the presenters like a wheel of fortune at a fairground.

Like last year, there were nine semi-finalists selected by the televote and one wildcard which was the back-up jury's best placed non-televote qualifier. It wasn't made clear which that tenth qualifier was on the screen, but the results afterwards showed it and in both semi-finals, it demonstrated a distinct difference of opinion between the public vote and what the juries were thinking.

Going through from the first semi-final were:

Iceland - 174 points

Türkiye - 172 points

Bosnia & Herzegovina - 125 points

Sweden - 105 points

Armenia - 104 points

Malta - 86 points

Israel - 75 points

Portugal - 70 points

Romania - 67 points

The back-up juries then picked Finland as their wildcard. They'd been in 12th place in the televote with 42 points.

For the second semi-final the results were:

Norway - 201 points

Azerbaijan - 180 points

Estonia - 115 points

Greece - 110 points

Moldova - 106 points

Ukraine - 80 points

Albania - 73 points

Denmark - 69 points

Lithuania - 66 points

In this semi-final, the juries' favourite non-televote qualifier was Croatia who had been 13th with only 33 points.

It was noticeable just how few of the acts that were early in the running order qualified. In the second semi-final, only one of the first eight songs qualified directly and the juries saved Croatia. In the first semi-final two of the first eight songs qualified.

Whether this was down to running order choices or down to all of only watching the second-half of the show is not clear.

In the final there were a couple of things to notice. First, the big four and hosts did considerably better than they had been doing. This was probably down to song and performance choice with both the UK and France wowing for vocals and personality.

There were some significant shifts in order from the semi-finals to the final, something that had been seen in the previous contest, but they were more noticeable this year. This almost felt organic as favourites had a week to grow in the minds of fans and casual viewers. Having the two semi-finals gave songs the opportunity to become earworms and by the final, many people weren't seeing the songs for the first time, and definitely had favourites.

There was one noteworthy achievement this year. The winner got points from every single country. That resulted in what was a points record at the time. Given that it won't come as a surprise that the scoring sequence was not a nailbiter.

So, spoiler time, the results of the 2009 Eurovision song contest.

Norway - Alexander Rybak - "Fariytale" - 387 points

Iceland - Yohanna - "Is It True?" - 218 points

Azerbaijan - Aysel and Arash - "Always " - 207 points

Türkiye - Hadise - "Düm Tek Tek" - 177 points

United Kingdom - Jade Ewan - "It's My Time" - 173 points

Estonia - Urban Symphony - "Rändajad" - 129 points

Greece - Sakis Rouvas - "This Is Our Night" - 120 points

France - Patricia Kaas - "Et s'il fallait le faire" - 107 points

Bosnia & Herzegovina - Regina - "Bistra voda" - 106 points

Armenia - Inga and Anush - "Jan Jan" - 92 points

Russa - Anastasia Prikhodko - "Mamo" - 91 points

Ukraine - Svetlana Loboda - "Be My Valentine! (Anti-Crisis Girl) - 76 points

Denmark - Brinck - "Believe Again" - 74 points

Moldova - Nelly Ciobanu - "Hora din Moldova" - 69 points

Portugal - Flor-de-Lis - "Todas as ruas do amor" - 57 points

Israel - Noa and Mira Awad - "There Must Be Another Way" - 53 points

Albania - Kejsi Tola - "Carry Me in Your Dreams" - 48 points

Croatia - Igor Cukrov feat. Andrea - "Lijepa Tena" - 45 points

Romania - Elena - "The Balkan Girls" - 40 points

Germany - Alex Swings Oscar Singa" - "Miss Kiss Kiss Bang" - 35 points

Sweden - Malena Ernman - "La Voix" - 33 points

Malta - Chiara - "What If We" - 31 points

Lithuania - Sasha Son - "Love" - 23 points

Spain - Soraya Arnelas - "La noche es para mi" - 23 points

Finland - Waldo's People - "Lose Control" - 22 points

The standard state of affairs had been restored! New countries thoroughly mixed in with the traditional countries. Semi-finalists mixed in with the pre-qualifiers. A winner that united everyone behind it. It was a result that no one at all could complain about or claim had been fixed.

The return of the juries was proclaimed (at least for now) a great success and the EBU breathed a huge sigh of relief. Any of the controversy surrounding 2009 was not coming from the outcome of the contest.