What might the future of criminal procedure be if the community jury trial right is fully applied to all aspects of the criminal justice system? How might we better our understanding not only of the criminal process, from beginning to end, but also of the plight and abuses suffered by many defendants and prisoners? What might we gain as a community by interacting more closely with the justice system? The possibilities are abundant: better appreciation of the duties and obligations of citizenship, more balanced views on how to punish crime, a more nuanced comprehension of the end results of sentencing, a better sense of who our neighbors are, and an increased investment in the indelible cohesion of our local society – that much-lamented and nebulous civic group.

With the advent of Apprendi-Blakely, our standard understanding of the original meaning of the right to a jury trial has been called into question. The Supreme Court’s recent work strengthening the jury trial right, based on the people’s historical right to determine all punishment, has greater textual and historical warrant than previously supposed. Obscured by over a century of misunderstanding, it is time for the collective jury trial right to once again come into its own. By expansively interpreting this right as community participation in the criminal justice system, the collective jury trial right can be translated, updated, and implemented in ways appropriate for the twenty-first century, not only the eighteenth.