A matter of language or a matter of bodies
The mistrial of Frank Quattrone, banker to the internet, could prove a legal milestone of the post-Enron era in America. But that was not the only thing that made it newsworthy last week. Mr Quattrone is famous for having financially sired such new-age companies as Amazon.com and Netscape. But his fame was eclipsed last week by a far more mundane form of parentage: a juror in his trial had a baby.
This was the first really big show trial of the internet era, and the fact that it ended in mistrial must give other white collar celebrities hope that they too will escape the public's vengeance. But the trial was more than that: it was a sort of cultural soap opera, where the personal lives of jurors were a central feature.
One became a father, another suffered sudden illness of an ailing parent, a third had to complete a house purchase. Deliberations were delayed as a result: suddenly wives, children, mothers and estate agents of the jury seemed an obstacle to the impartial administration of justice.
But the bigger message was: American justice depends on the welfare of hoi polloi. Jurors are people too and, increasingly, they are the common people.
According to a recent study from the National Legal Centre for the Public Interest, a think-tank, the American jury is increasingly composed of unemployed and retired persons - because the rest of us manage to avoid jury duty altogether. So the fate of everyone from Mr Quattrone to the Washington DC sniper depends on the ability of courts to communicate basic principles of justice to the lowest common denominator of juror. And that means dropping the Norman French in favour of standard American English.
For, increasingly, a large minority of American jurors are familiar neither with the language of American jurisprudence nor with the cultural assumptions that support it. Those who are born into the culture take on judicial concepts almost by osmosis: when every third television drama is a cop show, reasonable doubt and presumption of innocence are as basic as the alphabet.
But where jurors are neither native speakers of English nor indigenous to the American judicial culture, courts need to try harder to help Joe Juror play his role as citizen adjudicator. California, which has a large population foreign to the language and concepts of American law, has just completed several years of work aimed at bridging the gap between the US legal system and its jurors.
The result is a refreshingly clear set of Californian jury instructions that took effect last month. They are set at a level that even sparsely educated 16-year-olds can understand.
From now on, judges in California state courts can choose how to instruct jurors in civil trials. They may choose to tell them, as before, that "failure of recollection is common. Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon." Or they may prefer the new plain-English version: "People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember." The difference could make or break a life: futures hang on whether or not jurors understand that witnesses are, often, simply unreliable.
California judges will also be allowed to redefine the term "preponderance of the evidence". According to a Washington DC study, Joe Juror regularly misapprehends this phrase: half of all jurors studied think it means they should ponder the evidence carefully. Now California has removed this confusion. The new instruction gives a common-sense definition of preponderance: "more likely to be true than not true".
I studied Norman French at university and nothing can shake my devotion to its beauty. But it has no place in the modern American courtroom. Subtle concepts of law can be rendered in frontier English - if only one tries hard enough.
Some traditional jurists resist the notion of "dumbing down" the law. They say it is impossible to simplify a subject that is not simple in the first place: if the words are changed, the law changes too. Justice is in the linguistics.
But the plain-English crowd argues that if justice is to be done at all, it must assume a more plebeian garb. That is probably true. But it could mask a deeper problem: the dumbing-down of the American jury pool.
Not more than a quarter of American jurors show up to do their democratic duty to the justice system. Jury boxes are staffed by those with time on their hands or without the chutzpah to refuse to serve - and they scarcely satisfy the constitutional requirement that Americans face a jury of their peers.
So the composition of the American jury may be the real problem, not the complication of American jury instructions. Alexander Hamilton, one of America's Founding Fathers, called the jury "the very palladium of free government". Most Americans may not understand the word "palladium" - I certainly did not. But everyone understands that the jury is a basic structure of American democracy.
It cannot function properly until Americans stop refusing to do their patriotic duty in court. The real solution to the American jury crisis is not just a matter of language - it is a matter of bodies. Everyone from Frank Quattrone to the lowliest sniper deserves to be judged by society as a whole - not just by those members of it who have nothing better to do. America needs new jury service laws as surely as it needs new, more comprehensible jury instructions. This is not a linguistic problem. It is more complicated than that.
语言问题还是机制问题
对后安然(Enron)时代的美国而言，互联网业银行家弗兰克o奎特隆(Frank Quattrone)一案的无效审判或许将是一个司法里程碑。但这件事在上周成为新闻却并不仅仅因为这一点。奎特隆先生以亚马逊(Amazon.com)、网景(Netscape)等新生代公司的"融资之父"著称。但在上周，他的名声被一件世俗的家事所掩盖了：参与他案件审理的一位陪审员生了一个孩子。
这是第一场真正引人注目、有关互联网时代的重大审判，但它却以无效审判告终，这一定会让其他白领名人们心生希望：也许他们也将逃脱公众的报复。不过这一审判的意义远不止这些：它是一种文化肥皂剧，陪审员的个人生活成为了重点剧情。
有人成了父亲，有人因身体不佳的父母突然发病而遭受痛苦，还有人则必须买房，于是审判被延期。突然间，陪审员的妻子、孩子、母亲以及房产中介似乎阻碍了司法的公正执行。
但此事所传达的更重要信息是：美国的司法公正视普通民众的安康而定。陪审员也是人，而且，他们是普通人。
智囊机构全美公共利益法律中心(NLCPI)近期的研究显示，在美国的陪审员构成中，失业和退休人员比重越来越大，因为其他人都在设法躲避陪审员义务。于是所有人的命运，从奎特隆先生到华盛顿特区的那位狙击手，都取决于法庭是否有能力把司法的基本原则传达给最底层、最普通的陪审员。这也意味着他们要放弃诺曼法语，转而采用标准的美式英语。
这里面的原因是，在美国陪审员中，大量少数族裔人士既不熟悉美国司法的语言，也不熟悉美国司法背后的文化背景。而那些生长于这一文化环境中的人，几乎是在司法概念的包围下长大的：三分之一的电视剧上演的都是"警察秀"，合理怀疑和无罪推定就像字母表一样普通，让人耳熟能详。
但在陪审员的母语不是英语、也并非在美国司法文化中长大的情况下，法庭就需要花更大的力气，帮助陪审员担负起公民陪审员的职责。加州有很多人对英语和美国法律概念都感到陌生。该州刚刚完成一项持续数年的工作，旨在消除陪审员与美国法律体系间的差距。
工作的成果是一套令人耳目一新的加州陪审员指导细则，这一细则于上月生效。就细则的文字程度而言，就算没受过多少教育的16岁少年也能读懂。
从此，加州法庭的法官在民事审判中就能选择指导陪审员的方式。法官可以选择像从前那样告诉陪审员："回忆失败是常事。无心的回忆出错也并不少见。"或者，他们可以使用细则中的浅显英语版本："人们经常忘事，或把事记错。"两种说法的区别也许是成败的关键：案件的未来就取决于陪审员能否了解，证人经常是完全不可靠的。
加州的法官还将获准重新定义"优势证据"(preponderance of the evidence)这个术语。根据华盛顿特区的研究，一般陪审员经常误解这个用语。在调查中，半数以上的陪审员认为，该用语的意思是，他们应当仔细考量证据。现在，加州已解开了迷团。新细则中提供了一个对"优势"的常识性定义，即"真实的可能性大于虚假的可能性"。
我在大学里读过诺曼法语，我从来不会动摇的信念是----这门语言优美无比。但是，这门语言在现代美国法庭上无容身之地。只要人们尽力而为，即使是美国的边疆区域的英语，也能传达法律的微妙概念。
一些传统的法学界人士拒绝接受把法律表述"浅显化"的意见。他们认为，简化一门原本就不简单的学科是不可能的。如果用词改变，法律也改变了。司法寓于语言之中。
但提倡通俗英语的人们认为，如果真想实现司法公正，司法还得穿一身更平民化的外衣。这或许是对的，但可能掩盖一个深层次问题，即美国陪审团群体的浅显化。
至多只有四分之一的美国陪审员出席审判、履行他们在司法体系中的民主义务。而坐在陪审席上的，不是手头有时间就是那些不好意思拒绝效力的人，他们根本无法满足宪法要求，即美国人民面对的陪审团成员必须是与他们地位相等的人。
所以，真正的问题在于美国陪审团的组成，而非美国陪审团法律指示的复杂化。美国建国之父之一亚历山大o汉密尔顿(Alexander Hamilton)将陪审团称作"自由政府的真正卫士"。虽然大多数美国人可能不懂"palladium"(卫士)这个字的意思，我当然也不懂，但每个人都知道，陪审团是美国民主中的一个基本结构。
只有美国人不再拒绝上法庭，去履行一名爱国者的义务，陪审团才能完全发挥作用。真要解决美国陪审团危机，不仅仅是解决语言问题，还要解决陪审团的组成问题。从投资银行家弗兰克o奎特隆到地位最低下的狙击手，他们都应该接受整个社会的审判，而不只是社会中那些除了当陪审员,就没有更好选择的人的审判。美国需要新的陪审团服务法，如同它需要新的、更容易理解的陪审员指导细则一样。这不是语言问题，而要比语言问题更复杂。
