>>> Item number 543, dated 94/03/22 19:39:37 -- ALL

Date:         Tue, 22 Mar 1994 19:39:37 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Representative Juries

When and why did juries become "representative"? The ideal used to be that jurors should NOT really represent a cross-section of the community. They should have special knowledge of the parties or they should be more intelligent or responsible than the average citizen--the "honest men of the neighborhood" not just the "men of the neighborhood." I'm sure someone can correct me on this if I am wrong, but the ideal seems now to be that jurors should reflect their communities. I consulted Kermit Hall's bibliography and found nothing to answer this question. Is this a product of the civil rights movement? That recent?

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Matt Greider
cfnek@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

>>> Item number 545, dated 94/03/24 08:08:14 -- ALL

Date:         Thu, 24 Mar 1994 08:08:14 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Representative Juries

          I can't speak to the ultimate question of origins, but you
          may find Ballard v. U.S. to be helpful.  In that case, I
          believe in 1946, the Supreme Court held that in
          jurisdictions where states allowed women to serve on juries,
          federal juries must not exclude women.  The Court based the
          ruling on the notion that men and women are different, and
          so bring different qualities to the jury.  This supposed
          difference would enhance the jury's deliberations.  So
          although the Court didn't require juries to include women,
          it at least took a step in the direction of
          "representativeness" by disallowing exclusion of women in
          certain circumstances.

          This obviously pre-dates the civil rights movement, although
          it does come during a time (immediate post-WW II) when
          gender (as well as race) were being rethought.

          Mary L. Dudziak
          mdudziak@lawnet-po.law.uiowa.edu

                             * * *

      You should see Verdict According to Conscious by Tom Green.

He tells the story of juries from the 1300's until the 1700's and discusses this transformation, among others. He is working on a book taking this story into the United States and up to the present. I don't know if he has published any articles from that work or not yet. Ben Brown

On the representative jury question, look for a forthcoming article in the Michigan Law Review by John Langbein.

It seems to me your query conflates several issues. First, the problem of getting sufficient numbers of freeholders "of the vicinage" to serve on juries was vexing colonial officials before the Revolution in several colonies. Second, the generally-accepted view of early 19th century juries--David Bodenhamer on Jacksonian juries, Jamil Zainaldin's survey of changing roles of judge/jury in Law in Antebellum Society--is that increasing professionalization and procedural sophistication demanded that juries be better at fact-finding, but at the same time, juries seem to have been increasingly willing to find what they wanted and the climate of democratization probably did mean that people were selected who knew the parties involved but perhaps were not all that better educated or knowledgable in the law. My suspicion is that it all depended on where you looked in the 19th century and also whether we are speaking of criminal or civil trials. Your query then seems to me to be asking about change of venue: this, I think you correctly suspect became more of an issue in civil rights cases or in spectacular criminal cases where pre-trial publicity was an issue-and that dates back to the 1920s and 30s certainly, and even earlier in specific cases, or in cases of revulsion at jury verdicts where the press believed a jury to have been prejudiced.A. G. Roeber u32878@uicvm.cc.uic.edu

>>> Item number 549, dated 94/03/24 18:09:50 -- ALL

Date:         Thu, 24 Mar 1994 18:09:50 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Re: Representative Juries

To send the question of juries back a ways, another book to read (I don't think anyone has suggested this, and I apologize if someone did so) is Barbara Shapiro's _Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Probable Cause: Historical Perspectives in the Anglo-American Law of Evidence_ (1991), particularly chapter 1 (trial juries) and chapter 2 (grand juries).

elizabeth ruth dale <erd1@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>

>>> Item number 550, dated 94/03/25 14:39:49 -- ALL

Date:         Fri, 25 Mar 1994 14:39:49 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Re: Representative Juries

As an Early Americanist, I'd submit that the "representative" jury is as old as the republic -- indeed, I'd venture to place it before the Revolution. But it would be easy to argue that the jury, as a quasi-legislative body in much of early America, enjoyed the same reputation/imperative to reflect the community at large. DT Konig
Washington U. in St. Louis
dtkonig@artsci.wustl.edu

On Tue, 22 Mar 1994 cfcrw%uxa.ecn.bgu.edu@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu wrote:

> When and why did juries become "representative"? The ideal used to be > that jurors should NOT really represent a cross-section of the > community. They should have special knowledge of the parties or they > should be more intelligent or responsible than the average citizen--the > "honest men of the neighborhood" not just the "men of the neighborhood." > I'm sure someone can correct me on this if I am wrong, but the ideal > seems now to be that jurors should reflect their communities. I consulted > Kermit Hall's bibliography and found nothing to answer this question. Is > this a product of the civil rights movement? That recent? >
> Thank you for any help you can provide. >
> Matt Greider
> cfnek@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
>

>>> Item number 551, dated 94/03/25 14:57:18 -- ALL

Date:         Fri, 25 Mar 1994 14:57:18 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Re: Representative Juries
In-Reply-To:  <199403252042.AA16613@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> from "cfcrw" at Mar 25,
              94 0

No doubt David Konig is right that grand juries thought of themselves as "representative" in colonial era. See his "Country Justice: The Rural Roots of Constitutionalism in Colonial Virginia" in *Uncertain Tradition*. You might see also Richard D. Younger, *The People's Panel*. And Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Community, Class, and Snopesian Crime" in *Class Conflict, and Consensus* argues that the wealthy relied on poorer people to do jury work (which they found tiresome) and therefore made concessions to the lower classes to keep satisfied and on the job. I don't have the citation right here, but Michael Wayne recently wrote an article in the *JAH* disputing Wyatt-Brown. He found juries "representative" of the wealthiest slaveholders--not the whole community.

Perhaps the problem is the word "representative." Elites often think or claim they "represent" everyone. But nineteenth-century grand jurors, I believe, were supposed to be special people. W. H. Sparks, for example, in *The Memories of Fifty Years* published in 1870, claims that "Those selected as grand jurors were chosen because of their superior intelligence, wealth, and purity of character." These special people undoubtedly thought they "represented" their communities but did NOT represent a cross section of average citizens--a randomly selected sample.

Chris Waldrep
cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

>>> Item number 553, dated 94/03/29 06:49:22 -- ALL

Date:         Tue, 29 Mar 1994 06:49:22 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Re: Representative Juries

I don't remember who first raised this issue, or what his/her actual question was. In any event, an interesting book on the jury in 18th and early 19th US is Stimson, The American Revolution in Law (Princeton 1990). I discuss it and related issues in an essay at 18 Law and Social Inquiry 135 (1993).

D.M.

David Millon

School of Law
Washington and Lee University
Lexington Virginia 24450

phone: 703-463-8993
fax: 703-463-8488
e-mail: dkm@fs.law.wlu.edu