Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/316

3<X> HAR VARD LA W RE VIE W. moned from different counties, to choose one juror alternately from each. (c) Moreover, as among eligible persons, there seems always to have existed the power of selecting those especially qualified for a given service. Jurors are summoned not merely from closer or less close neighborhoods, but from the senioribus etlegalioribus, as asked in 1198 (Rot. Cur. Reg. i. 354); and from experts and men of particular trades, like the London juries of cooks and fish- mongers, where one was accused of selling bad food. 1 What we call the " special jury " seems always to have been used. It was a natural result of the principle that those were to be summoned who could best tell the veritatem rei. And so we read that in 1645-6, in the King's Bench, . . . "The court was moved that a jury of merchants might be retained to try an issue between two merchants, touching merchants' affairs, and it was granted, because it was conceived they might have better knowl- edge of the matters in difference which were to be tried than others could who were not of that profession " (Lilly's Pract. Reg. ii. 154). In some cases this selection was regulated. In the grand assise, as we have seen, knights were regularly the jurors. So in the jury of attaint (Bract. 291). In 1323 (Fitz. Ab. Attaint, 69), when it was objected that there were no knights on the jury, Herle, J., said, "You never saw such a jury taken without a knight," and ordered a venire facias of knights and others. In Coke's time (Inst. 156), we read that "in an attaint there ought to be a knight returned of the Jury." 2 Trials at bar often required special juries. Indeed, Blackstone (iii. 357) is willing to say that " special juries were originally introduced in trials at bar, when the causes were of too great nicety for the discussion of ordinary freeholders ; or where the sheriff was suspected of partiality, though not upon such apparent 1 Ryley, Mem. London, 266 (135 1) ; ib. 536 (1394); Palgrave, Merch. and Friar, 190-194. The jury of the " half tongue, " de medietatem linguc?, was founded on consid- erations of policy and fair dealing, rather than a wish to provide a well-informed jury. See "Ordinance of the Staples," 27 Edw. III. st. 2, c. 8 (1353) ; and St. 28 Edw. III. c 13 (1354). 2 The challenge for this defect is supposed to have been abolished in 1751 by St. 24, Geo. II., c 18, s. 4, although the recital in this section deals with another sort of case. In Blackstone's time (Com. iii. 351), the rule in attaint was "twenty-four of the best men in the country."