The passing of Queen Elizabeth II brought to mind the final scene in the movie, Twelve Angry Men.
The 1957 film stars Henry Fonda as one of twelve jurors debating the guilt or innocence of a defendant who has been charged with murdering his father. With two brief exceptions—the opening scene and the closing epilogue—the entire story unfolds in a single New York City jury room. After receiving their instructions from the judge, the dozen men enter the jury room and poll themselves. One has reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt; the other eleven vote “guilty”. The air is sultry, the heat oppressive. The humidity builds right along with the tension in the room as the jurors wrestle with the details of the case, seeking to reach the required unanimous decision. A thunderstorm erupts and tempers flare dangerously close to violence. The room darkens as day becomes evening, and rain pours outside the now closed windows.
Completely engrossed, I felt palpably relieved when the jurors reach a verdict. The movie concludes with a short epilogue. Two of the jurors walk together down the steps of the courthouse, and one, smiling, turns to the other and introduces himself. “I’m McArdle.” The other man smiles, offers a handshake, and replies, “I’m Davis.” They go their separate ways. The End.
Wait—what?!?
It hit me rather like a thunderclap that none of the jurors have names. I had watched the entire movie without realizing or caring that none of the characters has a name. The audience doesn’t know their names, and they don’t know each other’s names. I had thought the opening credits, in which each actor is identified as Juror 1, Juror 2, Juror 3, etc., nothing more than a clever technique.
The twelve jurors have a job so critical it is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as a counterbalance to the awesome power of the State. But it doesn’t matter WHO the jurors are. They come together to fulfill a function. They part ways when it is finished. Yes, their personalities impact the debates. Yes, their insights fuel the discussion. Their individual personhood is important to the extent it contributes to the outcome. But the institution of the jury is more important than the men themselves, angry or otherwise.
And so it has been for the institution of the British monarchy and the woman who held the job for seventy years. Queen Elizabeth II fulfilled the duties of the Crown without stepping outside or atop the Crown. She never allowed herself to become bigger than the role.
Yuval Levin writes that in the not-too-distant past individuals were shaped or formed by institutions such as Congress, or churches, or newspapers, or universities. A person would serve in Congress, or serve a congregation. A journalist would work for a newspaper, and a researcher would study and teach at a university. But Levin notes that increasingly individuals use institutions as platforms for their own ends: the Congressman who has more communications staffers than policy staffers; the pastor who rakes in huge donations and jets around the country; the journalist who opines instead of reports; the professor who Tweets instead of teaches. It’s all been flipped on its head.
Institutions provide both a restraint on boundless change and a framework within which to wrestle with and effect desired change. They are building blocks of civilization. Certainly, periodic renovation of institutions is expected, and not every institution should exist forever. But when people do not maintain their institutions, attending to the details and duties both glamorous and tedious, the structures begin to deteriorate. Eventually, under the weight of those who claw and scrape their way to be seen and heard outside and above those institutions—those who use the institution as a stage instead of a workshop—those who are not content to be known only as “Juror 7”—the institutions themselves collapse. And we are left without the places necessary to work through our disagreements in a civilized manner.
The Queen’s daily tasks, which ranged from the prosaic to the exalted, may have been largely ceremonial. She appointed prime ministers, and cut ribbons in tiny villages; opened new sessions of Parliament, and threw garden parties at the palace; declared war, and reassured the country that they would prevail. Yet those duties are the structure that holds the center and prevents the centrifugal forces of messy society from ripping apart civilization.
Like the fictional jurors in Twelve Angry Men, Queen Elizabeth II did her duty. Until the end of her life, the monarch remained a loyal servant to the monarchy.
