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
