Verdict on the value of juries

Beyond familiar arguments lies an important, often neglected question: can juries safeguard the courts from culture wars? I believe they can. Today, the political right accuses the left of censoring speech in the name of sensitivity, while the left accuses the right of weaponising “free speech” to excuse prejudice. In such an environment, the danger is obvious: if a single judge decides a contentious case, the verdict can be quickly dismissed as ideological.

The Joey Barton case illustrates the point. The former footballer’s comments, widely condemned as offensive, raised the question of whether they crossed into hate speech. Had a judge alone ruled, the debate would likely have been whether the judge was “too woke” or “too reactionary.” Instead, with a jury, the focus shifted to the real issue, the boundaries of free speech itself.

That distinction matters. A jury forces society to confront the substance of arguments rather than speculate about decision-makers’ politics. It keeps public discourse tethered to principle rather than personality. In America, the lesson is stark: controversial rulings often collapse into attacks on the judiciary. Judges are accused of partisanship or ideology. By contrast, juries diffuse responsibility across ordinary citizens, making it far harder to dismiss a verdict as the product of one person’s bias, and they protect the judiciary from becoming a lightning rod for every cultural battle.

This collective approach protects confidence in the courts. If verdicts are seen as expressions of judicial ideology rather than collective judgment, trust falters. The public will not feel that justice has been done, but that one worldview has prevailed over another. In a society already fractured by culture wars, this strikes me as a dangerous path.

From my own experience, jury trials can feel like a breath of fresh air. With a judge, you often have a good sense of the likely approach. With 15 members of the public, the case feels more open, more unpredictable, and in some ways more authentic. One of the quieter strengths of the jury system is exactly this: the sense a case is being tested in the open, against a wide range of perspectives, not filtered through a single viewpoint. That dynamic is rarely discussed, but it is vital to how justice feels to those involved.

Traditionally, juries have been reserved for the most serious cases. Yet juries may now be most valuable in areas not usually considered - like free speech cases. These cases shape how society defines itself, as they are the cases where public confidence is most fragile because they touch directly on politics, culture, and identity.

Juries are unlikely to disappear entirely. But their future is not guaranteed. What they offer is collective judgment, legitimacy, and protection against ideological suspicion and that may be exactly what the justice system needs most in 2026. If we want to keep culture wars out of the courtroom, juries may be our best defence.

Douglas McConnell is a Partner, Duncan & McConnell Solicitors