The English Legal System is the system of law which uses the common law system that has developed in England from approximately 1066 to the present. It has been a long history since the establishment of the system until today. Legal history seems to be less important in modern days and less relevant to a student's needs. Regarding the perception, J.H Baker says, "This could hardly be more wrong, since legal history is the study of legal change. Unless we regard law as no more than a body of randomly changing rules, its history must be an essential in its study."1 It is also submitted that the history of English law must also be an essential dimension in the social and intellectual history of United Kingdom, as well as being a key to understanding much of the available evidence of the past.2.
Looking at the English jury system, as we know it now, it is basically a system made up of 12 individuals randomly chosen from the general public to attend and hear court trials whereby they are tasked with the responsibility to give a final verdict in the end. It originally appears to have its roots steeped in the Norman Conquest, during which a very early concept of it was brought to Britain. Indeed the jury system has acquired powerful critics in the British legal system, in the media and amongst lawyers, academics and senior officers. Glanville Williams, for instance, has voiced the concern of many by focusing on the very foundations of the system: the calibre of individual jurors: "persons whose ordinary occupations are of a humble character rarely qualify to be regarded as first rate intellectual machines. They are not accustomed to giving sustained attention to the spoken word and many will have a narrow vocabulary and range of ideas."3 However, the jury system still plays a main role today as the trial by jury is an ancient and democratic institution. It provides an opportunity for the layman in the administration of the legal system, to reassure the rest of citizens that justice is being done in individual cases, and to act as a restraining influence on the professional judiciary.
