This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 29th, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

The constitutional role of the jury has been supplanted by legislative and other limitations.

Sujah Thomas is author of the missing American jury.

We spoke today.

Why was a grand jury considered to be an important thing in the founding era? So grand juries were considered important because they were a check on the government and so there was the initial check of the grand jury deciding whether a case should proceed and so at least 12 people

would decide that a case should proceed against a criminal defendant and so it was a

check on the in the English times it was a check on

on the crown and their prosecuting cases and and so that was important and then we had the additional check of the

jury that 12 people had decided so you had 24 people had to decide

that someone was going to be punished in some way.

It may be death and it may be some type of imprisonment,

but people from the community we're going to decide.

As you note in your book the burden that is necessary to get a grand jury to agree to an indictment

has decreased.

And you say that's sort of taken away power

from the grand jury, because if they have less to decide,

and the line between yes and diet or no don't indict is a much clearer line there's

really less for them to do.

Yes I mean I touch on it briefly in the book,

because others have written on that subject

that this standard for a grand jury actually

finding someone that the case actually goes forward against someone has actually

...