In the Hands of the People: The Trial Jury's Origins, Triumphs, Troubles, and Future in American Democracy.

In the Hands of the People William L. Dwyer Thomas Dunne Books www.stmartins.com 252 pp., $24.95

Here's a question to ponder while the coffee brews: Why don't more trial judges write books? Nearly every facet of human drama, morality, and even comedy is eventually played out on the courtroom stage. Yet, of tens of thousands of trial judges who might share with readers the lessons learned from life on the bench, few have done so. One who has is Senior U.S. District Judge William L. Dwyer of the Western District in Washington.

Dwyer can look back on a remarkable career in the law. Raised in modest circumstances, he became one of the leading trial lawyers in the state. In 1960, he won a libel verdict that rescued the reputation of noted lawyer-legislator John Goldmark, who had been falsely accused of being a Communist. In 1968, he defended, pro bono, a Black Panther charged with armed robbery, winning an acquittal by an all-white jury. Later, he took on the American League and kept baseball in Seattle, in the form of the Mariners.

A measure of his stature is that President Reagan nominated Dwyer, a Democrat, to the federal bench in 1986, with the support of both of the state's Republican senators. As a judge, Dwyer presided over a number of high-profile cases and may be best known for ordering the U.S. Forest Service to protect the spotted owl.

But Dwyer's purpose in writing this volume for the general public is not to regale readers with war stories. His message is more urgent: Juries, no less than elections, are a vital element of our democracy, and they generally work far better than critics would admit.

"Yet now there is a serious risk that they will disappear from our trials," he writes, "not through any fault of theirs, but because of indifference, neglect, and misunderstanding about their work." Indeed, the role of the jury has already been under mined by tort "reform" legislation and U.S. Supreme Court decisions bestowing greater power upon judges.

To give readers a greater appreciation of the jury system, Dwyer devotes the first half of his book to tracing its historical development. He covers familiar ground, moving from trial by ordeal to the rise of the modern jury, with tributes along the way to such landmarks as the trials of William Penn and John Peter Zenger. The jury, Dwyer writes, is "a great gift from the past, from men and women who stood up to arbitrary power and created the rule of law, often at ruinous cost to themselves."

He also gives a moving account, based on original source materials, of the Salem witch trials, a failure of justice that he links in part to the ban on trial lawyers in the colony of Massachusetts. His warning that America could again descend into "procedural lawlessness" takes on an ominous cast as the United States embarks on its domestic war against terrorism.

One unfortunate omission in this historical overview is the story of the Seventh Amendment. Popular demand for trial by jury in civil cases nearly derailed ratification of the new Constitution until the Federalists agreed to add that guarantee to the Bill of Rights. Still, Dwyer's message is clear: "No other society has bet so heavily on the common man's and woman's good sense."

In general, American juries have lived up to this promise. The "runaway jury" is little more than a myth, Dwyer contends. Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that juries do a good job of deciding even complex and emotionally charged cases based on the facts presented to them.

The second half of the book focuses on how to improve the system. Most of what ails litigation in the United States can be blamed on what Dwyer calls the "Six Deadly Sins": overcontentiousness, expense, delay, fecklessness, hypertechnicality, and overload. These are primarily the sins of lawyers and judges, not of jurors. Indeed, Dwyer argues, judges can avoid many of the embarrassments and failures of the justice system--the O.J. Simpson trial is only one example--by taking more aggressive control of trial and pretrial proceedings.

He also suggests a number of steps to enhance the jury's work as well as its public standing. One is to improve the jurors' accommodations and increase their compensation while making it more difficult for the affluent to evade jury service. Others include allowing jurors to take notes and submit questions, using plain English in instructions, and sharply reducing sequestration and interruptions in the progress of the trial.

None of these proposals is particularly novel; some are already being implemented in pilot programs. Most citizens would be surprised that any of them are at all controversial. Certainly no one could oppose Dwyer's suggestion that "jurors should be treated with the courtesy and respect due to officers of the court."

One proposal likely to rankle some trial lawyers is the suggested elimination of peremptory challenges. In Dwyer's view, peremptories unduly prolong the jury selection process while supporting a cottage industry of expensive consultants. Equally important, he contends, they send a message to the public: The side that more cleverly stacks the jury wins, rather than the side that presents a stronger case on the merits.

In the Hands of the People is directed not specifically to lawyers but to all citizens concerned about the justice system. Certainly the views of trial judges deserve greater attention than those of the columnists and comedians who have made it fashionable to ridicule jurors. Even Supreme Court justices, who generally have almost no experience presiding over jury trials, cannot speak with greater authority on the work and worth of juries than the typical courtroom judge.

As Dwyer observes, the stakes in this public debate are high. In his view, "the jury is the canary in the mineshaft; if it goes, if our people lose their inherited right to do justice in court, other democratic institutions will lose breath too." And the fate of the jury, ultimately, rests in the hands of the people.

Jeffrey White is senior amicus counsel of the Center for Constitutional Litigation in Washington, D.C.