We live in a nation in which we are supposed to be judged by our peers, which is why we have juries in the first place. That is to say, if the law was always decided by judges the end result for the people would be a system of justice, in which the people did not truly have their say, and though judges may very well know the law, it can also be said, that the knowing of the law is not necessarily the same thing as justice, especially when such is unequally applied and biased.
It is important to recognize that jury nullification when so actuated, means that those that are members of the jury, aren’t going to therefore render their verdict based upon the law, as it is, but rather they are going to exercise their right to not apply that particular law because they do not believe that the law as so written is a law that should be adhered to. For instance, back in the day when the colonists were still under the thumb of Great Britain, those that were sympathetic to the protests so going on in regards to the colonists not having sovereignty over their own personhood and of being taxed without any representation, could then exercise that belief by the dutiful exercise of jury nullification, therefore not convicting those that were in violation of the law as the British rulers so saw it. So too, when the Fugitive Slave Clause was so legislated into effect, those of the North, who were abolitionists at heart, did not believe that their duty was to return a runaway slave back to servitude, especially when that runaway slave was in a “free” state, and thus they would exercise their right of jury nullification.
Look, it has to be recognized that the law is oftentimes behind the eight ball, or is in effect, behind the times as to what is or is not occurring at the present day, so that, laws that criminalized homosexual behavior, or birth control, or interracial marriage, or the possession of cannabis, and so on, were once the ruling law of the land, but these laws, have become since then either overturned or are no longer applied. Yet, before the law was changed, these were indeed the laws of the land, signifying for those that were members of the jury at that time, an opportunity for them to uphold the law as so written, knowing that they did not agree with it, or through jury nullification to disown it.
Each of us is defined by the decisions that we so make, and of which, it has to be recognized, that not every law is a good or even a fair law, and further to the point that the law is ever slow to change, so that for those that desire to see change, they have a responsibility to either own up to doing the right thing, or to acquiesce to those that they believe that they must so be obedient to. Indeed, those that take what appears to be the revolutionary step of jury nullification are the very same as those that stood up to the injustice of British rule, and helped therefore to make this a land of freedom and liberty, with justice for all.