[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE NESSON: Hi, I'm Charlie Nesson.
I'm a professor of law at Harvard University.
The goal of this course, JuryX, is to reclaim deliberative process
as a way of moving forward, as actually a way of governing ourselves.
This class is about "we the people."
And jury is the most basic way in which we
the people have come to think about educating ourselves.
I'm interested in exploring the actual interaction of jury process with you,
the idea of identity, the idea of equality,
of being one of a small group of persons who deliberate
an issue toward a unanimous conclusion.
It is an interesting and profoundly stimulating
process in which you learn to listen, you learn to speak without rancor,
you learn to persuade and be persuaded.
The nature of this class will be deliberation of issues and polling
of results.
The object, to allow each of you to see where you stand,
and where your jury stands, in relationship to others.
First, we're going to learn a few things about context,
then organize into small groups.
And then you will observe what I call a stimulation, a provocation, something
that each of you observe in common that will pose an issue.
I will pose it to you and ask you to deliberate.
Deliberate to a conclusion.
And at the conclusion, I will solicit from you
information about your process.
The result of your process, both individually and as a collective jury.
We will begin by deliberating very interesting, but not emotionally
loaded, cases.
And actually organizing ourselves into groups
and conducting a deliberation and a polling on these warm-up cases
is the frame that we build for looking at more serious issues.
Initially, we begin with a tort case, a case of civil wrong.
Second, we turn to a criminal case.
Our third module will engage Snowden and the issue of our privacy.
Fourth, we turn to big sport.
We follow that with legalization.
And then last, the issue that is currently on the table,
and is indeed the issue on which all of jury in the United States turns-- "I
Can't Breathe."