The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s4.2

c10.s4.2

Modern liberty, both political and judicial, has, theoretically at any rate, one of its greatest corner-stones in the trial by jury. It consists in the right to be judged by one’s peers. As such its origins can be traced to the primitive Frankish, Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon customs. But the definite beginnings of the institution, as it obtains in Europe, are to be sought in the Civil and Criminal Juries of England in the twelfth century. To a certain extent its crude origins are furnished also by the *Vehm-gerichte* or Fehmic Courts of the thirteenth century which were developed in the German-speaking lands (viz. Westphalia) between the Rhine and the Weser.¹ India’s political experience seems, however, to furnish the first land-marks of the system among the Indo-European races.