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Jury by peer sounds mighty lofty, except that in this case (and I would argue probably in most cases) it wasn't. The peer of Samsung and Apple isn't some random dude from Arkansas, but instead the likes of LG, Google, Microsoft, etc.


You participate by electing your representatives. You're just playing with words here.


And yet much of the world manages to function perfectly happily without them. So again, it's sweet that you believe it, it's just that it is factually not true.


This comment stinks of American exceptionalism and is quite insulting to the rest of the world. What you're saying, in a sense, is that some other country, by not following the American justice model, is somehow less democratic. Those countries, however, would claim that America's justice system, on the other hand, is geared towards dispensing uncivilized mob justice.


It's merely an assault on your childish notion that democracy is the be-all-end-all in all matters. There are very real examples of democracy getting it badly wrong (e.g. the trial of Socrates).


Can you please point me to some resource that shows that the US rejected a former system of judiciary not based on common law? Because from what I understand, the US inherited the common law system from the former colonies, which in turn had it implemented long before by the British (hint: common law isn't an American invention).


I can see you believe "democracy is da best!" as almost some sort of holy truth, but this only conspires to warp your reasoning, like in the Samsung-Apple case, where you're essentially trying to defend a bad judgement (it's a fact that the foreman's standard for dismissing prior art is wrong) in order to save your beloved justice system. A rational person would be looking to fix it.


While formally correct, it was not what I was getting at.


Perhaps I should have phrased it more accurately: the judicial process shouldn't be democratic. There are also problems with the justices themselves being democratically elected, but that is an argument for another day.


Of the above you cite only the executive and legislative are democratically elected. The rest are not. I sure hope members of the medical services in your country aren't elected by popular vote, but are appointed based on their track record.


And this is exactly the fault of your reasoning, right there. The truth is not subject to democracy. To say so is to say that king Canute's idea of commanding the tide not to come in wasn't totally insane.


What you're essentially saying is that truth can be determined by democratic processes, i.e. popular vote. If that is, why don't we determine scientific progress by popular vote? Here's a hint: because it doesn't really work.


I should have clarified I was talking about the judicial process, not the office itself.


I never said that every case is always clear-cut. I'm merely calling for a change in the process to more correctly approximate the truth based on what we have learned in the scientific process. Our judicial processes were developed in an age when "witnessing" was equivalent to "evidence", before science defined what cognitive biases are, before we could gather prints, DNA samples, A/V footage etc. Most common law justice systems are still stuck largely in medieval times.


Yes, I can see it is obvious to you, but you can't explain it. Democracy isn't the magic bullet you imagine it to be.


Never say never.


And here you show it clearly. You have an emotional attachment to the way things are, rather than a rational one. It's understandable and natural, but consequently you will not listen to rational argument. It's like trying to reason a believer out of a particular religion - they don't believe it for rational reasons, so rational arguments will not work.


It really boils down to this: it theory jury systems sound lofty and fantastic. But in practice, it's a bunch of uneducated dimwits who are trying to slice through a complex process and frequently get it badly wrong (or use the wrong reasoning to get to conclusions), as in the Samsung-Apple case.


The problem is that it wasn't a panel of their peers. It sounds lofty when you put it in, but it just wasn't and probably isn't in most cases. In most cases, juries consist of uninformed members of the public which do not grasp concepts such as emotional bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect and how easily people are influenced by authority. Even though a total redesign of the common law processes is nearly impossible, some adjustments could be made to make the process less error-prone.