Secondly, helping the law to take its course, not merely as a spectator but as a participant, is to understand why it is so important that we be ruled impartially by law rather than by arbitrary fiat. It shows why, if we detach our legal system from its foundations in Judaeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman, Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, we aid the enemies of Western civilisation, secular and religious, to whom the rule of law is an abomination. We must not, for example, compromise the protections that the law offers to women by devolving family law to sharia courts. Nor do we wish to repeat the experience of totalitarian states, where "bourgeois" justice gave way to people's courts and revolutionary tribunals. In some such cases, it has proved extraordinarily difficult to rebuild respect for the rule of law. Russia and China are examples.

Thirdly, it became very clear to me in my work as a juryman that the rule of law is rooted in the nation state, not in supranational bodies such as the EU or UN. This insight is not shared by many, particularly on the Left, who see the rule of law purely as a means to a political end. The grand old man of German philosophy, Jürgen Habermas, makes the suggestion that the eurozone crisis is an opportunity "for the peoples of Europe to regain, at a European level, the sovereignty that was stolen from them by ‘the markets' a long time ago". To this end, he demands "a new politics of self-empowerment", because "to abandon European unification now would be to quit the world stage for good".

This seems to me exactly the wrong way round. It means that nations must sacrifice their traditions of law, legislation and liberty in exchange for a "place in the sun" (as Kaiser Wilhelm II would have said). The "politics of self-empowerment" means the empowering of politicians. It won't be at the expense of the markets, but of millions who depend on them for their livelihoods. For instance, the Tobin tax on financial transactions, far from empowering "the peoples of Europe", will actually impoverish them by driving business away from London and Frankfurt to New York and Hong Kong. "Fiscal union" means Europe is replacing democracy and the rule of law with oligarchy and the rule of bureaucrats. On the world stage, Europe cuts a pitiable figure by abandoning liberty under the law. 

I emerged from my spell of jury service with an enhanced respect for the law, if not for lawyers. Beyond the Anglosphere, the blessings of common law are actually quite uncommon; without it, the world would be a much worse place. That pioneer of constitutional monarchies and republics, John Locke, put it best in his Two Treatises of Government: "Where law ends, tyranny begins." And any ruler who is above the law — as the EU institutions are in effect — is a tyrant.