B.2. The Vice President of the Jury

A Jury for a classical bout is normally composed of one President and four Judges.  The Judges and the President together determine the materiality of a hit (whether or not a hit arrived on target, at all, or not at all); the President determines the validity of the hit (whether or not a touch is awarded based on the rules of priority for the weapon).  However, for a brief time in the 1930s a sixth member could join a Jury in Great Britain, the Vice-President.

The position and functions of a Vice-President are detailed in the 1937 Rules for Competition published by the Amateur Fencing Association.  The Vice-President as a member of the Jury was first adopted by the Amateur Fencing Association in 1933.  The Vice-President position had evidently disappeared by the time of the publication of Professor Roger Crosnier's A Guide to Judging and Presiding at Foil and Sabre in 1950.

The Vice-President appears to have been an individual, probably qualified to serve as a President, whose primary function was to vote in the place of the President when the President was of no opinion on matters of either materiality or validity.  The assumption that he or she was probably qualified to serve as a President is based on the responsibility of the Vice-President to vote on matters of validity when the President had no opinion.  The specific duties of the Vice-President were to give his or her opinion (in other words, cast 1 1/2 votes as to materiality or rule on the validity of a touch):

• If the President had no opinion in the case of one Judge voting "no," "yes," or "yes but not valid" and the other Judge abstaining.  Note that "yes but not valid" is not specified as a vote in the 1937 rules. 
• If the President had no opinion in the case of the two Judges voting in opposition to each other (one "yes" and one "no") or if both Judges abstained.
• When the President had no opinion as to the validity of a touch or as to the priority in time of a hit in epee.

What does the Vice-President bring to the bout that justifies having an additional official in the Jury?  The simple answer is that the presence of a Vice-President reduces the probability that a particular phrase will result in a doubtful hit or an inability of the President to determine the priority of the action.  This does not mean that the Vice-President necessarily increases the accuracy of calls.  

A Vice-President is merely replacing the abstaining President in the decision process and has just as much of a chance to make the wrong call as the President did.  And if the President has an opinion, even if it is seen by the Vice-President as being clearly the wrong call, the Vice-President has no vote.  Although it may be tempting to think of the Vice-President as serving in the function of the modern video referee in coming to a consensus decision as to the validity of a hit, that would be an error.

Why did the Vice-President not survive into the modern era?  The available information does not suggest a reason.  However, there are two obvious possibilities.  First, finding sufficient skilled Presidents, Directors, or Referees to staff a tournament has never been an easy task.  Tieing up two qualified Presidents on a piste halves the number of pistes that can be run and reduces the availability of reliefs when a President is tired and starting to make fatigue-driven errors.  Second, actual use of the concept may have demonstrated an added level of complication with no great increase in utility.

Copyright 2019 by Walter G. Green III.

The Vice-President of the Jury by Walter G. Green III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.