Hello! I've been down a rabbithole on Aristotlean thought about democracy and the academic who introduced me to the topic off-handedly used the phrase "juries without judges" (or something to that effect). And my interpretation of this was basically a system of courts by sortition-based tribunal. And ever since my mind has been overrun with ideas about how such a concept might be acted upon: would it be a stratified sampling; would there be further selection akin to American "voir dire"; how many people should make up a tribunal; are they selected for a term or per trial; should they have full power as adjudicators; what might the authority of legal representation; what would be the process of appeal?

With all these questions, I naturally sought out some sort of historical implementation or something adjacent to it. As of yet, the closest I have come is this rather niche movement to have sortition for the United States Supreme Court. It's far more modest in its aims—it proposes existing circuit judges are randomly selected for one year of cases. It's a genuinely refreshing idea in the blatantly partisan state of the SCOTUS at present, ro be sure.

Yes. Most probably.

I need to code a super mod that'll handle the process of sortition. Once I get enough applicants, I'll deploy the bot. I haven't coded the bot yet, but I'm giving myself 2 weeks, post which I'll start the cycle.

Tentatively, 14th of next month is when this com will get new mods. And application process would tentatively start around the start of September.

The bot would run on service that'll have my credentials, I'll need to figure how that'll work and how to include that in sortition process without compromising it. Any suggestions on that are welcome.

Till then, I'm the mod of the subreddit.

Sortition is a practice of forming government by choosing people at random. It was practiced in ancient Athens and in modern times is practiced as an advisory committee.

This community is for talking and discussing about sortition.