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To discuss discrimination, it is first necessary to define it. We can define discrimination in this sense as “Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners” (Heritage Dictionary, 2004). As this implies, discrimination requires some form of action to be so, and usually one with a defined outcome. An example of this is the stereotypical landlord who refuses to rent property to black tenants. This is an important discrimination from prejudice, which is defined as “Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion” (Heritage Dictionary, 2004). We can therefore see that the two are likely to be related in cause but are very different in practise as it is only discrimination that causes a difference in outcome for a member of the discriminated against group - indeed it is when prejudice manifests itself in an action that it changes to being discrimination.

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The central plank of trials within a jury based system is this: “No free man shall be captured, and or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, and or of his liberties, or of his free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against him by force or proceed against him by arms, but by the lawful judgement of his peers, and or by the law of the land” (Spooner, 1852). The implications of this are very weighty indeed.

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