Jury nullification

This is a hardy perennial that will certainly come up as a resolution sooner or later. This is a really good article on the subject.

If law has a moral foundation, then it would owe (at least some of) its authority to that moral foundation. This would seem to entail (with some suitable and lengthy argumentation) that any law that goes against that moral foundation would be an illegitimate law. This would clearly provide a moral basis for jury nullification. After all, if the jury has correctly discerned the law as being illegitimate (that is, it violates the moral foundation of law) then they would be in the right to refuse to apply it. Naturally, if they elected to apply it, then the folks on the jury would be acting in what would seem to be an immoral manner. More...