John Henry Wigmore Quotes

#1. Trial by jury must and shall be preserved! Amidst the throng of crude sacrilegisms ... that assail us nowadays in the legal sanctuary, none is more shortsighted, none more dangerous, than the proposal to abolish trial by jury.

John Henry Wigmore

#2. Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history.

John Henry Wigmore

#3. Cross-examination is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth ... Cross-examination, not trial by jury, is the great and permanent contribution of the Anglo-American system of law to improved methods of trial-procedure.

John Henry Wigmore

#4. The grand solid merit of jury trial is that the jurors ... are selected at the last moment from the multitude of citizens. They cannot be known beforehand, and they melt back into the multitiude after each trial.

John Henry Wigmore

#5. Cross-examination is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth. You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. A lawyer can do anything with cross-examination if he is skillful enough not to impale his own cause upon it.

John Henry Wigmore