Abstract
In the United States, peremptory challenges allow attorneys to remove prospective jurors about whom they have doubts without having to give any explanations for the most part. Many American judges and lawyers believe that a fair jury trial depends on allowing both parties to exercise peremptory challenges. They support peremptory challenges because they worry that some prospective jurors will not be impartial, even though they say they can be impartial, and that without peremptory challenges these questionable jurors will serve. However, in several European countries, such as Spain, England, and Wales, there are impartial jury trials without peremptory challenges. Indeed, England and Wales used to have peremptory challenges but eliminated them in 1988. This paper challenges the assumption that peremptory challenges are necessary to a fair trial and uses several European countries’ jury practices as models. This paper argues that lawyers are not able to weed out who can be impartial and who cannot be impartial, and instead, they use peremptory challenges to keep qualified citizens from serving as jurors. Prosecutors, particularly in death penalty cases in the American South, use their peremptory challenges to keep Black prospective jurors from serving, particularly when the defendant is Black. This paper is part of a larger project that shows how every stage of the jury process helps to transform citizens into responsible jurors. Peremptory challenges, which keep qualified citizens from serving, are a barrier to this transformation. This project offers an optimistic view of the transformative power of the jury.
Presenters
Nancy MarderProfessor of Law and Director of the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center, Law School, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Civic, Political, and Community Studies
KEYWORDS
Juries, Citizenship, Diversity, Minorities, Trials, Impartiality, Peremptory Challenges, Race, Discrimination
