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Trial by jury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Dick Tahta*
Affiliation:
St John's Cottage, Alton Barnes, Wiltshire SN8 4LB

Extract

In French law, the 12 members of a jury are not required to return a unanimous verdict. It was decreed in 1831 that a vote of 8 or more would suffice. Four years later, it was proposed to reduce the requirement to 7 or more. There was a heated discussion in the Chamber of Deputies of this proposal which was strongly challenged by Arago, a mathematical physicist. Despite his ardent use of probability theory, the law was in fact changed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1991

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