The Yale Law Journal has published “The Radical Roots of the Representative Jury,” by Thomas Ward Frampton (University of Virginia School of Law). The abstract:
For most of American history, the
jury was considered an elite institution, composed of “honest and intelligent
men,” esteemed in their communities for their “integrity,” “reputation,” or “sound
judgment.” As a result, jurors were overwhelmingly male, jurors were
overwhelmingly white, and jurors disproportionately hailed from the middle and
upper social classes. By the late 1960s, an entirely different, democratic
conception of the jury was ascendant: juries were meant to pull from all
segments of society, more or less randomly, thus constituting a diverse and
representative “cross-section of the community.” This Article offers an
intellectual and social history of how the “elite jury” lost its hegemonic
appeal, with particular emphasis on the overlooked radicals—anarchists,
socialists, Communists, trade unionists, and Popular Front feminists—who
battled to remake the jury. This Article offers a novel look at the history and
tradition of the American jury, demonstrating how the Sixth Amendment’s meaning
was—gradually, unevenly, but definitively—reshaped through several decades of
popular struggle, grassroots mobilization, strategic litigation, and
social-movement contestation.
Read on here.
— Karen Tani