The civil jury consists as in England of twelve jurors chosen by
ballot from the names on the list of those summoned. There is a
right of peremptory challenge limited to four, and also a right
to challenge for cause. Unanimity was at first but is not now
required. The jury if unanimous may return a verdict immediately
on the close of the case. If they are not unanimous they are
enclosed and may at any time not less than three hours after being
enclosed return a verdict by a bare majority. If after six hours
they do not agree by the requisite majority, i.e. are equally divided,
they must be discharged. It was stated by Commissioner Adam,
under whom the Scots civil jury was originated, that in twenty years
he knew of only one case in which the jury disagreed. Jury trial
in civil cases in Scotland has not flourished or given general satisfaction,
and is resorted to only in a small proportion of cases. This is
partly due to its being transplanted from England.
Ireland.—The jury laws of Ireland do not differ in substance from those of England. The qualifications of jurors are regulated by O’Hagan’s Acts 1871 and 1872, and the Juries Acts 1878 and 1894. In criminal cases much freer use is made than in England of the rights of the accused to challenge, and of the Crown to order jurors to stand by, and what is called “jury-packing” seems to be the object of both sides when some political or agrarian issue is involved in the trial. Until the passing of the Irish Local Government Act 1898, the grand jury, besides its functions as a jury of accusation, had large duties with respect to local government which are now transferred to the county councils and other elective bodies.
British Empire.—In most parts of the British Empire the jury system is in force as part of the original law of the colonists or under the colonial charters of justice or by local legislation. The grand jury is not in use in India; was introduced but later abolished in the Cape Colony; and in Australia has been for most purposes superseded by the public prosecutor. The ordinary trial jury for criminal cases is twelve, but in India may be nine, seven, five or three, according to certain provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code 1898. In countries where the British Crown has foreign jurisdiction the jury for criminal trials has in some cases been fixed at a less number than twelve and the right of the Crown to fix the number is established; see ex p. Carew, 1897, A.C. 719. In civil cases the number of the jury is reduced in some colonies, e.g. to seven in Tasmania and Trinidad.
European Countries.—In France there is no civil jury. In criminal cases the place of the grand jury is taken by the chambre des mises en accusation, and the more serious crimes are tried before a jury of twelve which finds its verdict by a majority, the exact number of which may not be disclosed. In Belgium, Spain, Italy and Germany, certain classes of crime are tried with the aid of a jury.
United States.—The English jury system was part of the law of the American colonies before the declaration of independence; and grand jury, coroner’s jury and petty jury continue in full use in the United States. Under the Federal Constitution (Article iii.) there is a right to trial by jury in all criminal cases (except on impeachment) and in all civil actions at common law in which the subject matter exceeds $20 in value (amendments vi. and vii.). The trial jury must be of twelve and its verdict must be unanimous; see Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (6th ed.), 389. The respective provinces of judge and jury have been much discussed and there has been a disposition to declare the jury supreme as to law as well as fact. The whole subject is fully treated by reference to English and American authorities, and the conflicting views are stated in Sparf v. United States, 1895, 156 U.S. 61. The view of the majority of the court in that case was that it is the duty of the jury in a criminal case to receive the law from the court and to apply it as laid down by the court, subject to the condition that in giving a general verdict the jury may incidentally determine both law and fact as compounded in the issues submitted to them in the particular case. The power to give a general verdict renders the duty one of imperfect obligation and enables the jury to take its own view of the terms and merits of the law involved.
The extent to which the jury system is in force in the states of the union depends on the constitution and legislation of each state. In some the use of juries in civil and even in criminal cases is reduced or made subject to the election of the accused. In others unanimous verdicts are not required, while the constitutions of others require the unanimous verdict of the common law dozen. (W. F. C.)
JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS, or Droit du Seigneur, a custom alleged to have existed in medieval Europe, giving the overlord a right to the virginity of his vassals’ daughters on their wedding-night. For the existence of the custom in a legalized form there is no trustworthy evidence. That some such abuse of power may have been occasionally exercised by brutal nobles in the lawless days of the early middle ages is only too likely, but the jus, it seems, is a myth, invented no earlier than the 16th or 17th century. There appears to have been an entirely religious custom established by the council of Carthage in 398, whereby the Church required from the faithful continence on the wedding-night, and this may have been, and there is evidence that it was, known as Droit du Seigneur, or “God’s right.” Later the clerical admonition was extended to the first three days of marriage. This religious abstention, added to the undoubted fact that the feudal lord extorted fines on the marriages of his vassals and their children, doubtless gave rise to the belief that the jus was once an established custom.
The whole subject has been exhaustively treated by Louis Veuillot in Le Droit du seigneur au moyen âge (1854).
JUS RELICTAE, in Scots law, the widow’s right in the movable property of her deceased husband. The deceased must have been domiciled in Scotland, but the right accrues from movable property, wherever situated. The widow’s provision amounts to one-third where there are children surviving, and to one-half where there are no surviving children. The widow’s right vests by survivance, and is independent of the husband’s testamentary provisions; it may however be renounced by contract, or be discharged by satisfaction. It is subject to alienation of the husband’s movable estate during his lifetime or by its conversion into heritage. See also Will.
JUSSERAND, JEAN ADRIEN ANTOINE JULES (1855–), French author and diplomatist, was born at Lyons on the 18th of February 1855. Entering the diplomatic service in 1876, he became in 1878 consul in London. After an interval spent in Tunis he returned to London in 1887 as a member of the French Embassy. In 1890 he became French minister at Copenhagen, and in 1902 was transferred to Washington. A close student of English literature, he produced some very lucid and vivacious monographs on comparatively little-known subjects: Le Théâtre en Angleterre depuis la conquête jusqu’ aux prédécesseurs immédiats de Shakespeare (1878); Le Roman au temps de Shakespeare (1887; Eng. trans. by Miss E. Lee, 1890); Les Anglais au moyen âge: la vie nomade et les routes d’Angleterre au XIV e siècle (1884; Eng. trans., English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, by L. T. Smith, 1889); and L’Épopée de Langland (1893; Eng. trans., Piers Plowman, by M. C. R., 1894). His Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais, the first volume of which was published in 1895, was completed in three volumes in 1909. In English he wrote A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II. (1892), from the unpublished papers of the count de Cominges.
JUSSIEU, DE, the name of a French family which came into prominent notice towards the close of the 16th century, and for a century and a half was distinguished for the botanists it produced. The following are its more eminent members:—
1. Antoine de Jussieu (1686–1758), born at Lyons on the 6th of July 1686, was the son of Christophe de Jussieu (or Dejussieu), an apothecary of some repute, who published a Nouveau traité de la thériaque (1708). Antoine studied at the university of Montpellier, and travelled with his brother Bernard through Spain, Portugal and southern France. He went to Paris in 1708, J. P. de Tournefort, whom he succeeded at the Jardin des Plantes, dying in that year. His own original publications are not of marked importance, but he edited an edition of Tournefort’s Institutiones rei herbariae (3 vols., 1719), and also a posthumous work of Jacques Barrelier, Plantae per Galliam, Hispaniam, et Italiam observatae, &c. (1714). He practised medicine, chiefly devoting himself to the very poor. He died at Paris on the 22nd of April 1758.
2. Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777), a younger brother of the above, was born at Lyons on the 17th of August 1699. He took a medical degree at Montpellier and began practice in 1720, but finding the work uncongenial he gladly accepted his brother’s invitation to Paris in 1722, when he succeeded Sébastien Vaillant as sub-demonstrator of plants in the Jardin du Roi. In 1725 he brought out a new edition of Tournefort’s Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris, 2 vols., which was afterwards translated into English by John Martyn, the original work being incomplete. In the same year he was admitted into the académie des sciences, and communicated several papers to that body. Long before Abraham Trembley (1700–1784) published his Histoire des polypes d’eau douce, Jussieu maintained the doctrine that these organisms were animals, and not the flowers of marine plants, then the current notion; and to confirm his views he made
