Opinion | The Genius of Leaving Trump’s Fate Up to 12 Ordinary Floridians

After the Sept. 11 attacks, courts became especially adept at protecting sensitive information even while sharing access to it with the defense and the jury. The Classified Information Procedures Act proved an invaluable tool, for example, in the prosecutions stemming from the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, in which classified information, including from foreign intelligence services, was central. With the court’s approval, prosecutors presented redacted documents, drew up summaries and relied on protective orders to ensure terrorism trials did not compromise sources and methods. Juries still found enough information to assess the charges, and in many of those cases, they voted to convict.

But negotiating those accommodations, which must happen before the trial, can take time — time that in this case brings us ever closer to the 2024 election in which the defendant is now a leading candidate.

If the judge says no to compromises like summarizing key documents, the prosecution might decide that some are simply too complex or too sensitive to put at issue in the case. Of course, the more sensitive the document in Mr. Trump’s possession, the more it might tend to show that his actions put the country at risk. But the government may have to make that choice, and quickly, if it hopes to bring the case to resolution before the defendant has the chance to be elected president and appoint his own attorney general again. The jury would then be left to reach its verdict without access to what might be the government’s strongest evidence.

Despite all the challenges, the framers of the Constitution never doubted that national security crimes belonged in front of juries. The original national security crime, treason, is the only offense expressly defined in the Constitution itself, and it has involved juries in deciding, among other things, issues as complex as whether a defendant engaged in conduct that counts as giving “aid and comfort” to our enemies.

Indeed, the framers saw the jury’s role as essential. The British government had used national security charges to silence its political opponents throughout the Colonies. In this nation’s new democracy, citizen juries would stand as an essential bulwark against that kind of abuse.

Mr. Trump has not been charged with treason. But all prosecutions of this kind carry special dangers of government overreach. Ordinary citizens remain the most democratically legitimate way of stopping it in its tracks.

That fact gives the jury in this case a uniquely authoritative voice. Mr. Trump’s supporters argue vociferously that the prosecution of a current presidential candidate by an administration of the opposing party could be motivated only by politics and revenge. However unjustified, these beliefs matter. They matter because the justice system cannot function unless most Americans view it as a legitimate arbiter of social disputes.