A Vacant Assembly, But Who is to Fill it?

By Andrew Costello

A nation is made up of many more people than just its’ citizens.  The jury system is one of the most iconic microcosms of the United States of America. It is as compulsory for most (active) citizens as the act of voting, a mainstay of our republic. It was not too long ago when Atticus Finch so proudly declared that “in our courts, all men are created equal” and that it is “no ideal to believe firmly in the integrity of our court and our jury system… it is a living, working reality.”  Unfortunately, this description of America, an idyllic one by present day terms, is not the true state of our justice system as it stands currently.  According to The New York Times, “only 1.3% of federal civil cases ended in trials” in 2006, “down from 11.5% in 1962” (Liptak, NYTimes, 2007).  With the number of lawyers rising precipitously, and the number of lawsuits exploding along with them, the ebbing of trials by jury, an entity held up by the sixth and seventh amendments, is surprising to say the least.

In a few states, this change is more pronounced than in California.  The jury trial rate has dropped from 42% in 1976 to 21% in 2005, a 50% decrease (Frampton, 2012).  It is not in spite of the huge rise in lawyers that this has occurred, but because of the growth of the profession that this has occurred. With the amount of lawsuits shoved in front of judges, there exists little time to give each their due time when conducting a trial by jury.  Instead, judges are frequently being requested for summary judgments; for example, summary judgments were requested in 17% of cases in 2006, compared with 1.8% in 1960 (Liptak, NYtimes, 2007).  This is bequeathing the duty of maintaining the law more and more to the professionals, the lawyers, and taking a large part of the responsibility out of the hands of the great majority, the citizens and people of this country.  Many view this as a welcome change, seeing it as a reprieve for busy citizens who need time attend to tasks that they deem necessary.  However, the jury system, as Atticus Finch realized, is the best way for common citizens to come together and counterweigh against the few and powerful that seek to influence the system with settlements, which are not in themselves bad, but can circumvent the proper proceedings.

So what can be done? Bob Wieckowski, chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the California Assembly proposed an interesting solution in AB 1401, a bill proposing to authorize legal residents to serve on juries.  This would loosen up the pressure on those citizens that are too “busy” to observe their constitutional duty, while inaugurating a whole set of set of residents, 12.6 million in 2010, into an equal standing in the legal system to which they are already held accountable, but in which they cannot themselves participate.  Bill Keller of the New York Times estimates that this would raise the eligible jury rolls by “about 15 percent,” (Keller, NYtimes, 2013). Many of our nation’s doctors, politicians, and even lawyers are not citizens; therefore, there should be little restricting non-citizens from participating on a jury except that it breaks with tradition.  The refilling of our courtrooms with able residents is a necessary counterweight, as the framers of the constitution well knew, to the growing centralization of significant processes in our nation, and revitalization for one of America’s democratic tenets.

Bibliography

Frampton, T. Ward. "The Uneven Bulwark: How (and Why) Criminal Jury Trial Rates Vary by State." Californialawreview.org. The California Law Review, 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

Keller, Bill. "A Jury of Whose Peers?" NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 22 Sept. 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

Liptak, Adam. "Cases Keep Flowing In, But the Jury Pool Is Idle." NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 30 Apr. 2007. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.