Trial by jury is important in the historical perception of English law. In that perception civil liberty was for a long time regarded as the supreme political aim of the English over the centuries. The meaning of ‘civil liberty’ has not been static since the term was first used in the seventeenth century. Milton's well-known use in the opening paragraph of Areopagitica almost amounts to a pragmatical definition of the concept:

Perhaps what Milton has in mind would now be referred to as ‘civil liberties’ in the plural; and where he says ‘complaints’ more recent advocates of civil liberties might think and speak of ‘protests’. How fully civil liberty, in the singular, has been achieved and whether a country without written constitution can fully achieve civil liberty or civil liberties are questions that may not receive identical answers from within England and from without. England's partners in Europe and, very probably, the descendants of English settlers in what were once colonies in North America, especially the United States, may now give an answer different from that given as a matter of course in England. But on the whole foreign commentators have over the centuries admired the liberty enjoyed in England. Wise men and women, as they look for liberty, need look no further than English trial by jury.