Predictability of the law Mansfield also encouraged by his attempts to incorporate large areas of commercial practice into the law. *** Mansfield was not greatly enamoured of the ordinary jury (as we know from his attempts to keep general verdicts out of their hands in seditious libel cases) and in commercial cases he was convinced that the unpredictability of a jury’s decision was a major source of dissatisfaction to businessmen. It is true that Mansfield is famous for the use he made of special juries drawn from the City, but this was merely an intelligent process designed to pave the way for the ultimate withering away of the jury function in commercial cases. *** We have seen how, in Mansfield’s time, Parliament and Government had neither the staff nor the expertise to carry through intelligible and rational law-making themselves, and why therefore this task fell on the Courts. But in this new commercial age the Courts themselves—though better equipped than Parliament—often lacked the expert knowledge to develop principles of commercial law acceptable to the business community. It was to overcome this gap in their expertise that Mansfield called in aid the special juries. They were to decide the individual case in such a way that the judges would then be able to use that decision as a base for the erection of general rules of law. In this way the law could become at once more predictable, more regular, and more in accordance with commercial customs.
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