Elections-by-Lot as a Judicial Selection Mechanism
There are not many instances of social decision making by means of an election-by-lot in contemporary Western societies. In the United States, the two major examples are the draft and the selection of jurors. In the past, however, lotteries were much more widely used. The best-known cases are the choice of political representatives by lot in the Greek and Italian city-states. The author of the first full-length treatment of the Athenian election by lot starts his treatise by acknowledging the greatest barrier to scholarly appreciation:
There is no institution of ancient history which is so difficult of comprehension as that of electing officials by lot. We have ourselves no experience of the working of such a system; any proposal to introduce it now would appear so ludicrous that it requires some effort for us to believe that it ever did prevail in a civilized community.
In addition to the lack of firsthand experience, a second barrier to scholarly appreciation likely derives from the fact that the lot has a distinctly religious origin. In fact, the religious aspect of casting lots is so apparent that there is a word for the procedure, “sorcery.” As the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology testifies, the root of “sorcery” is “sort,” Latin for “lot.” Thus, with respect to its Latin roots, sorcery is a technical term for “divination by lot,” a usage long since forgotten.
