Category: Sortition

It’s ironic that the burgeoning interest in randomly selected policy juries (citizens’ assemblies, deliberative polls etc) coincides with a proposal to seriously curtail the use of trial juries in the UK — a practice that dates back to Magna Carta (1215). Justice Secretary David Lammy (an alumnus of Harvard Law School) had previously defended trial by jury, arguing that by deliberating ‘through open discussion’ juries expose ‘prejudice or unintended bias’, since ‘judgements must be justified to others’.

Hélène Landemore used the example of the Hollywood movie 12 Angry Men (women were excluded from trial juries in some US states until 1968) to illustrate her argument for the epistemic value of diversity in her 2013 book, Democratic Reason. But it would appear that the Justice Secretary has changed his mind.

The Journal of Sortition is keen to publish an article defending the principle of trial by jury, and would welcome submissions on this topic. Submissions should be sent by email to Anna-Lena Konder (anna@imprint.co.uk).

In the wake of the claims of political bias at BBC News, former UK government minister Rory Stewart has argued that the body overseeing BBC governance should be selected by sortition. Stewart’s interest in sortition dates back to the time of his London mayoralty candidature, and his recent argument is on The Rest is Politics podcast (@ 31:46).

The case for the use of sortition in media oversight has been made in Journal of Sortition papers by Oliver Milne et al. and Oliver Dowlen.

Written by Alex Kovner

We can broadly classify the justifications for sortition into two categories: (a) positive justifications that focus on the virtues of sortition irrespective of other mechanisms, and (b) negative justifications that focus on how sortition can mitigate or eliminate undesirable features of electoral democracy. Positive justifications can be emotionally appealing and often come packaged with uplifting slogans; popular books such as Hélène Landemore’s Open Democracy and James Fishkin’s When the People Speak come to mind. (more…)

Given a measure of hermeneutic charity, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan could be taken to acknowledge the validity of decision making by citizen jury:

“if the representative consist of many men, the voyce of the greater number, must be considered as the voyce of them all.”  (Leviathan, Part 1, chapter 16)

The Leviathan frontispiece is composed of several hundred figures (which happens to be the minimum for a statistically-representative sample). So long as there are “many men” that’s all that matters – alteration of the numbers only affects the descriptive fidelity of the representation. Note that in the 1651 manuscript drawing, the heads are facing outwards towards the reader . . .

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Welcome to Sortition Agora—your new online home for exploring the exciting world of sortition! We’re thrilled to have you join us on this journey, where we bridge the gap between thoughtful academic research and lively public debate.