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In her book The Power of the Jury: Transforming Citizens into Jurors, Professor Nancy Marder describes how the trial process, beginning with the jury summons and ending with a post-verdict meeting with the judge, transforms citizens into jurors and then back into more fully engaged citizens. In each chapter, Marder offers suggestions for making the process more effective so that jurors are better prepared to fulfill their role in the American justice system. In some instances, Marder’s suggestions elevate the transformation from citizens to jurors over the actual task that jurors exist to perform—namely, to use their collective wisdom and community values to decide cases fairly and impartially. Overall, however, The Power of the Jury provides valuable insights into how citizens can be transformed into effective jurors and how this transformation can impact the legal system in the United States and society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juries have the power to nullify, but not the right. As a result, judges do not instruct jurors on nullification. If jurors learn about this power, they can exercise it. However, if they indicate their intentions during deliberations, they can be removed from the jury. This state of affairs, in which the judge does not tell jurors of their full power and jurors have to be careful not to signal their intent to nullify, is harmful to the judge-jury relationship. If judges instructed jurors on their power, jurors would be fully informed and would be able to trust the judge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 30 years, the Australian state of Victoria has made numerous reforms to a set of jury directions purporting to address concerns that rape trials do not adequately respond to the reality of sexual offending in the community. Building on work identifying the predominant narratives mobilised in rape trials, in this article we consider whether the way in which a jury consumes information during a trial explains why the jury directions, positioned and utilised as they are, appear to have been inadequate to the task of enabling juries to re-imagine evidence through alternative narrative frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]