我在 谈论死刑问题 时说，“司法系统在选择刑罚方式时，不仅要考虑罪罚相当，也要考虑公众对某一刑罚实施过程及其后果的审美感受”， 金枪鱼质疑 这将带来多数暴政的危险。 这一质疑不能成立，对多数暴政的危险，我历来保持警惕，也时常加以提醒，但法官考虑公众感受，并非将公众意见直接决定判决，而是将其纳入法治体系的程序正义框架之下，由法官严格控制的程序中得以表达，并经过法官的深思熟虑和审慎权衡之后，独立做出判断（即所谓自由心裁），这与法国大革命时凭群众的控诉音量决定是否砍下某人的头，是完全不同的。 普通法广泛采用的陪审团制度，其宗旨也在于为司法过程引入公众意见和常识理性，这种引入，在判别证据的可信度，和某种行为是否对旁人造成伤害（比如裸体散步是否对路人造成伤害）之类问题的判定上，有着不可替代的价值。有人说陪审制是一种司法民主，可以这么说，但与我们一般理解的民主大不相同：陪审团不许说话，不许提问，不许看报看电视，不许接受采访，只许听，而且要在法官的引导下听，法官告诉你哪些该听哪些不该听，即使听到了也要忽略。 所以，多数暴政并非源自公众参与，而是因为缺乏程序正义，陪审制便是明证。 普通法权威霍姆斯大法官（ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ）在其经典著作《普通法》（ The Common Law , 1881）中阐述了法律演化与公众意见的关系，下面两段文字摘自该书第一讲 Lecture I. Early Forms of Liability ，霍姆斯反复使用的good sense一词（全书共出现12处），很好的表达了我的意思： The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. We must alternately consult history and existing theories of legislation. But the most difficult labor will be to understand the combination of the two into new products at every stage. The substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly [2] corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then understood to be convenient; but its form and machinery, and the degree to which it is able to work out desired results, depend very much upon its past.…… ……And as the law is administered by able and experienced men, who know too much to sacrifice good sense to a syllogism, it will be found that, when ancient rules maintain themselves in the way that has been and will be shown in this book, new reasons more fitted to the time have been found for them, and that they gradually receive a new content, and at last a new form, from the grounds to which they have been transplanted.……