=Trial by Jury=
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by
man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its
constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789.
"It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges
are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves
to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this
power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the
exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of
English liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to Abbe Arnond, 1789.
"If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point
of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may
be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and
fact." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for
himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their
case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves
him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession,
betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering
questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and
himself." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1803.