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Juries are a key part of the Australian legal system.
According to Dr Andrew Burke, a Lecturer at the Macquarie Law School and Director at Juris Doctor, it is a civic duty as an Australian citizen to serve on a jury when you are called to do so, and people can be fined if they don’t.
Jury service allows members of the community to take an active role in the administration of justice.
Highlights
- Juries in Australia are only used for certain types of trials
- Candidates’ names are randomly selected from the Australian electoral roll
- A juror gets paid for each day of jury duty
While most people are initially apprehensive about serving on a jury, those who have gone through it often value the experience, says Dr Jacqui Horan, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at Monash University.
It’s not very often in your life that you get to do somebody else's job for a week or two, but in this case, citizens are able to be a judge and see how the justice system works. And it's a very fascinating once in a lifetime experience that after you've done it, you really appreciate it. And research has shown that people are happy to do it again once they've done it once.
