Only a small percentage of trials reach juries, but those that do are influential. When the jury acts, the government complies at once. Deciding the facts in a dispute is important of course, but while deciding the facts, the jury must really decide if the law or laws involved make good public policy - which means the jury is free to ignore the written law as if it did not exist.

  Jurors rarely know this. Judges like it when jurors are docile. It may look like a jury, but it doesn't smell like a jury, it doesn't talk like a jury, so it's not a jury at all. But if the panel is able to rise up and act on conscience in the face of bad laws, it turns itself into a jury, and forces the government to hang its head.