Simon Threlkeld argues that civic juries can make modern societies far more democratic and better governed than they are.

Simon argues in favour of civic juries deciding laws and choosing a wide range of public officials, and explains how such a method of lawmaking, and such a method of choosing public officials, could work.

See Simon’s articles, listed and linked at the Articles page, for his arguments and proposals on these topics from 1997 to the present.

Simon contributes to an ongoing discussion about decision-making by allotted bodies at the Equality by Lot blog, which is edited by Yoram Gat.

Simon is an author at Equality by Lot, a member of Democracy R & D, and was formerly a lawyer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where he lives. He has an MA in philosophy from the University of Toronto and a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School.

Civic juries can also be called, for example, citizen juries, citizens’ assemblies, civic assemblies, citizen assemblies, minipublics and minipopulaces. Or they can simply be called juries. They are chosen in civic lotteries, aka democratic lotteries, using scientific random sampling.

For the Classical Greeks, who are widely credited with inventing democracy, juries drawn from the citizens by lottery were a central and essential part of democracy. A new rebirth of the jury tradition in democracy has been underway and growing for over two decades.