by Nicole Flatow
Law professor Andrew Ferguson has argued that citizens should perceive their duty to serve on a jury as a civic duty equivalent to voting.
“This ideal of civic participation, the idea of we ordinary citizens coming to decide things just like they came to vote for the legislators was fundamental to the founders,” said Ferguson, a professor at the University of District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, during a recent American Constitution Society event.
But for the time being, many Americans are apathetic about this constitutional right.
In comes Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University who argues in The New York Times this week that jurors can play a particularly important role in making our laws fairer through the constitutional doctrine of “jury nullification.”
The idea of the doctrine is that when jurors vote on a defendant’s guilt or innocence, they are also voting on the fairness of the underlying law, or prosecutors’ enforcement of that law.
So if you think it is wrong to prosecute a person for marijuana possession, or if you think a particular prosecution is racially biased or inappropriate, you should vote “not guilty” in a marijuana possession trial, regardless of whether you think the person committed the crime, Butler suggests.
The Obama administration today 
"This action ... reflects the clear sea change taking place, both domestically and especially internationally, regarding drug policy," writes Glenn Greenwald at 
forty-year failed war on drugs.