Their civic duty should really just be to stay the fuck away from things they know nothing about. Only kinda kidding. In Canada juries are used very rarely. In my ten years of corp/comm litigation the use of a jury never came up once. I can't think of any colleague that ever had one. They are often used in personal injury cases where there is enormous incentive for the plaintiff to have a bunch of people involved that do not understand the biggest fact involved: the entire suit is being funded and directed by insurance companies (which can not be disclosed to the jury) and it is just a numbers game.
Yep. In the U.S., as you probably know, it's a right for criminal cases and some civil ones. I'm not really convinced this is the way to go, especially on really complicated things. Or with a black defendant.