The law, many appear to have concluded in the past few weeks, is indeed an ass. Or more precisely, the law as it applies in jury trials is no longer the risk-averse business they might once have thought.
Several recent controversial criminal trials have concluded and few, it seems, are satisfied with their outcomes. The second Bain trial produced a defendant declared by a jury to be not guilty.
That decision alone has divided a community and has raised, quite legitimately, questions about the attention the jury paid to all the evidence, and to the judge's summing up; as well as to the worth of the jury system in the modern world.
The relatively brief period of consideration of its verdict has leant weight to the supposition that the Bain jury had made up its collective mind to acquit early in the three-month trial, and certain social association between members of the jury and the defendant after the trial has reinforced the beliefs of the doubters.
The issue of whether jury trials - the ancient practice of being judged by one's peers - should continue is one that Parliament needs to consider without further delay, despite the misgivings and indeed the apparent indifference of the Minister of Justice, and the opportunity to do so will arise with its scrutiny of the revised Evidence Act later this year.
It is plainly obvious that jurors are being asked to come to decisions in some difficult cases without being in possession of all relevant information, including prior convictions of defendants; that, in effect, the courts have decided jurors cannot be trusted with it.
This means that the legal fraternity has come to believe itself to be superior, whereas the jury system evolved precisely because the judgement of one's peers was considered both needful and paramount.
The Evidence Act says all relevant evidence is admissible in a court proceeding but our Supreme Court decided that certain matters, in the Bain trial for example, if admitted might have a prejudicial effect.
Given proper direction by the judge, should that not be a matter for a jury to decide? Are today's jurors considered to be so inept, so misinformed, so ignorant and so subject to emotional influences that they cannot be relief upon to make a conscientious and considered decision?
In the days before the internet, talk-back radio, cellphones and the proliferation of other media outlets (in the widest sense), juries most often knew only what was presented about a case before them in trial.
Their consideration was more likely than not to have been largely uninfluenced by the coloration of gossip. Today, such material is virtually unavoidable: in this age of instant communication and instant opinion, juries must necessarily be tested on their knowledge of such things as blog-sites and the like.
But can the courts be sure juries are influenced by the wider forms of communication? No-one knows for certain for there has been very little research carried out on the jury system, how juries function, and what takes place in the jury room.
The little that has been done here suggests very strongly that there is a place for jurors, especially in complex or lengthy trials, to be given some tutorial preparation in how to consider evidence, how to work their way through a mountain of often conflicting material towards a decision, and how to organise the mass of material before them into probabilities.
That the legal system is developing an unhealthy distrust of the collective wisdom of juries is also reflected in the recent examples of cases being purposely moved from the locality of the crime to a distant court.
We know in some cases, and can infer in others, that in smaller communities local knowledge of a case is bound to be a mixture of fact and gossip, and that the courts fear prejudice as a consequence.
But this is an argument of weakness, especially in so-called "high profile" cases when any potential juror anywhere in the country has access to modern communication tools and all that that implies, and research anyway points to jurors being only rarely aware of sufficient details of pretrial publicity to enable them to form any bias or prejudgment.
Trials by jury should be held in the courts nearest to the location of the crime, for that is surely what is meant by being judged by one's peers.
As to whether our adversarial trial system should be abandoned as outdated in severe crimes, in favour of one or other variation on the inquisitorial systems used quite widely elsewhere, Parliament is far from ready to cross that Rubicon and it needs to be kept in mind that all such systems have their limitations.
The most important differences in the context of recent trials here is that the inquisitorial investigation to the point of trial is conducted judicially and in secret, and is a search for the truth not an inquiry with prosecution as the goal.
We need first to consider whether our system of searching for the truth is being compromised by our fear of it.
