Twelve, Neither More Nor Less

The jury box in a Florida criminal courtroom holds six chairs. In one of those courtrooms, in West Palm Beach, six people heard the state’s case against a chiropractor named Hamed Kian, and they convicted him on every count. Kian is forty-five years old, with an office up the road in Jupiter. Florida had suspended his license after three women he had treated complained that he kissed or touched them inappropriately, and prosecutors said he went right on seeing patients. The charge was practicing chiropractic medicine with a suspended license, a third-degree felony, five counts of it. He drew a year and a day in prison and five years of probation. The Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed in October 2025 and did not write an opinion, because none of this is unusual in Florida. Florida seats twelve jurors only in capital cases. Everything else, from this chiropractor’s case to armed robbery, has gone to six jurors since 1877.

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The Séance Court: Original Intent and the Fraud of Speaking for the Dead

Nine lawyers in black robes sit in a marble temple in Washington and commune with the dead. They ask James Madison, silent since 1836, how he feels about bump stocks. They ask a Virginia planter to rule on geofence warrants and a Boston merchant to weigh encrypted messaging, and they transcribe the answers with straight faces into the United States Reports. Every other corner of American life has a name for this ritual. When a widow pays for it in a candlelit parlor, we call it a séance and we call the medium a fraud. When five justices perform it in October Term, we call it originalism, and law schools award tenure for defending the candles.

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