While I continue to formulate my post for tricky subjects, I had a further world building question. It may play a part in the story.

Concerning trials in the Empire, I've been considering having professional jurors, instead of "peers". or at least, a partial jury of professionals. 6 peers, six pros, plus having special jurors who would be called to weigh in on forensics, psychology, etc. I'm thinking fourteen to sixteen jurors, as opposed to twelve. Also, going to the inquisitorial system as opposed to the adversial system we have.

Oh yeah, they have sedition laws. How should I enforce that? Thanks much.

It's worth noting that the idea that a "jury of one's peers" only means "fellow-citizens" or "fellow-citizens of the area in which one resides" is fairly recent. Not that long ago, a trial by one's peers was a jealously guarded right of nobles and of members of various guilds, so a nobleman had a right to a trial by a jury of noblemen (thus "the house of Peers"), a weaver to a trial by a jury of members of the Weavers' Guild, and so on. Partly this was so that profession-specific crimes would be decided by jurors who understood the specifics of the law and of the case, and wouldn't be led astray by bad explanations from the prosecution. I've adapted this idea for my own world.


My sense from my reading of history is that sedition laws are notoriously hard to enforce, and have primarily been enacted to either provide a tool for the most obvious cases or to attack one's political opponents. But basically, government officials would arrest and charge anyone they witness or hear about criticizing the government (or criticizing the government in strong enough terms; it depends on how tyrannical the government of the society you're designing is).