The right to a fair trial and judgement by a jury is a cornerstone of a democratic legal system. However, there are archaic aspects to the process and with a huge backlog of cases due to Covid, it’s a chance to reform this.

An important principle of UK law is that everyone accused of a crime should have the right to be tried in front of their peers. Currently, this means 12 individuals are randomly selected to hear evidence in a criminal case and decide whether the accused is guilty or not. Therefore, juries increase the legitimacy of the criminal justice system through the inclusion of the public in a trial process. They provide a valuable check and balance on the legal system and help to hold the government to account.

However, jury decisions also have many flaws that may to detrimental for those on trial, not to mention that it also takes a great deal of time and resources to assemble juries. The Covid crisis has brought these issues to the surface; this article highlights how the pandemic has led to a reported build-up of 457,000 criminal cases, an increase of about 100,000 since the pandemic began. Consequently, many possible criminals are free and many victims are possibly unsafe. For example, a woman who suffered extreme domestic violence in 2019 has had her case postponed and has since been told it may not come back to court before 2022.

In this sense, while the jury trials do support our right to a fair trial, there are flaws in the process and the Covid crisis may be an opportunity to reform the system.

Evidence suggests that jury trials have existed in some form for more than a millennium. However, this does not mean that they are exempt from criticism.

• Historians have been unable to pinpoint exactly where trial by jury was first practiced in the world, although there is evidence that it existed in places like ancient Scandinavian countries and the Roman Empire.

• In England, historians have argued that trial by jury may have been a concept that existed in a somewhat similar form during the Anglo-Saxon period, and then was developed by the Normans after 1066. The subsequent removal of other harrowing forms of trial such as trial by ordeal and trial by battle also lead to the increase in the use of jury trials for both civil and criminal cases.

• A more modern form of trial by jury was spread across the world due to events such as the growth of the British Empire and the impact of the French Revolution.

• Today, jury trials have been referred to as “the lamp which shows that freedom lives”, although they have also been criticised for allowing people’s personal prejudices to obstruct the administration of justice.