The Public-Jury System: Justice as a Collective Moral Act in Ethnosocialist Governance
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Justice is not merely a legal function; it is a moral expression of a society’s conscience. How a people judge wrongdoing reveals how they understand responsibility, legitimacy, and collective life. In ethnosocialist governance—where populocracy, commicracy, and ethnopublic consciousness define govoxical order—the public-jury system emerges not as an innovation, but as a natural reflex of justice itself.
Unlike the petit-jury system inherited from liberal-republican traditions, which delegates justice to a small, temporary proxy of citizens, the public-jury system returns justice to its rightful owner: the people as a collective moral body. It is justice exercised with the people, by the people, and in the presence of the people.
1. Justice and Governance: Why Systems Matter
All systems of justice are downstream of governance philosophy. Liberal-republican systems presume that legitimacy flows upward—from institutions, from courts, from professional elites who interpret law on behalf of society. Justice becomes something administered to the people.
Ethnosocialism rejects this premise. Under populocratic governance, legitimacy flows outward from the people themselves. Law is not a detached authority standing above society, but an ethical contract embedded within the social body. Therefore, justice must reflect collective moral coherence, not elite procedural expertise.
This is the civilisational distinction that necessitates the public-jury system.
2. The Petit-Jury System: Justice by Proxy
The petit-jury system, common in Western legal traditions, operates on representation rather than participation. A small number of citizens—typically twelve—are randomly selected, temporarily empowered, and isolated within a formal court structure to determine guilt or innocence.
While often defended as democratic, the petit-jury system is structurally elitist by design:
- Jurors are constrained by legal instructions they did not create.
- Evidence is filtered through adversarial professionals—lawyers, judges, prosecutors.
- Moral reasoning is subordinated to technical compliance.
- The broader community is excluded from deliberation.
In essence, justice is outsourced. The people are spectators, not participants. Verdicts are accepted because the process is lawful—not because it is collectively owned or fair.
This model prioritises procedural representation over moral legitimacy.
3. The Public-Jury System: Justice as Collective Ownership
The public-jury system in ethnosocialist governance reverses this logic entirely. It recognises that justice is not a technical ritual, but a social act—one that must be witnessed, understood, and affirmed by the community.
In a public-jury system:
- The people themselves form the jury body.
- Proceedings are open, transparent, and collectively observed.
- Moral reasoning is foregrounded alongside factual determination.
- Justice is deliberative, not secluded.
Here, justice is not performed for the people—it is performed by them. This system does not abandon structure or legal order. Rather, it embeds law within the lived consciousness of the community. Legal frameworks guide deliberation, but they do not monopolise judgment. The people are not passive recipients of law; they are its custodians.
4. Populocracy and the Natural Reflex to Public Justice
Ethnosocialism is built upon populocracy—the principle that sovereign authority resides directly within the people, not intermediating elites. If governance is populocratic, justice cannot remain oligarchic. The public-jury system is therefore not optional; it is structurally inevitable.
Where populocracy governs:
- Economic life is collectively regulated.
- Government power is govoxical and it is socially distributed.
- Moral authority is communally sustained.
Justice, in such a society, must follow the same logic. To do otherwise would produce a contradiction: a people trusted to govern themselves economically and govoxically, but deemed unfit to judge wrongdoing. Ethnosocialism rejects this inconsistency.
5. Moral Coherence Versus Legal Formalism
One of the defining strengths of the public-jury system is its emphasis on moral coherence rather than abstract formalism. Under the petit-jury model, verdicts may be legally correct yet socially alienating. Communities often feel disconnected from outcomes, especially when verdicts clash with shared moral intuitions.
The public-jury system resolves this fracture by ensuring that justice reflects:
- Cultural context.
- Communal values.
- Social memory.
- Ethical proportionality.
Justice becomes something the community can recognise, trust, and defend—not merely obey.
6. Transparency, Trust, and Accountability
Because public-jury proceedings are open and participatory, they naturally generate trust. There is no hidden deliberation, no inaccessible reasoning, no perception of elite manipulation. Accountability is collective:
- The people witness the process.
- The people affirm the verdict.
- The people bear moral responsibility for the outcome.
This collective accountability is a safeguard against corruption, bias, and institutional capture. Justice cannot be quietly distorted when it is publicly owned.
7. Justice Without Gatekeepers
In liberal-republican systems, justice is gatekept by professional classes—judges, lawyers, legal scholars—whose authority often exceeds democratic oversight. Ethnosocialism dismantles this gatekeeping.
The public-jury system does not eliminate expertise, but it subordinates expertise to popular legitimacy. Legal professionals serve the process; they do not dominate it. Law becomes a shared language, not a specialised monopoly. Justice is thus demystified and re-humanised.
8. A Living Legal Order
By embedding justice within the community, the public-jury system creates a legal order that is not static, but living. Law evolves alongside social values, ethical understanding, and communal memory.
This dynamism does not weaken justice—it strengthens it. A society that owns its justice system is one that actively maintains moral equilibrium.
Conclusion: Justice as a Civilisational Choice
The choice between petit-jury and public-jury systems is not merely procedural; it is civilisational.
The petit-jury system entrusts justice to a small, temporary proxy. The public-jury system entrusts justice to the people themselves. Where the former prioritises representation, the latter prioritises legitimacy. Where the former isolates justice, the latter socialises it. Where the former protects institutions, the latter protects moral coherence.
In ethnosocialist, populocratic governance, justice is not a spectacle, nor a technical ritual. It is a collective moral act—owned, exercised, and upheld by the people.
And in that ownership lies its true authority.
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