“…Thrown together for two weeks at Brooklyn Supreme Court with 22 other jurors, I was struck by how rare it is now in American life to be gathered, physically, with an array of other folk of different ages, backgrounds, skin colors, beliefs, faiths, tastes, education levels and political convictions and be obliged to work out your differences in order to get the job done.
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America could use more of that kind of experience. As it is, everyone’s shrieking their lonesome anger, burrowing deeper into stress, gazing at their own images — and generating paralysis.” — Roger Cohen (New York Times op-ed)
In my experience (at least with civil cases) juries don’t get the job done. One or two highly emotional and aggressive individuals usually cow all the timid members into agreeing with them, while the minority of actually intelligent and rational people present bang their heads against the wall trying to clarify the facts, but end up going along the rest of the group just so they can escape from the loony bin they’ve gotten trapped in. This is a particular problem in my state where it only takes the agreement of nine out of twelve jurors to render a civil verdict, leaving those bright enough to understand the situation unable to affect the outcome.
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In all my years on the voter rolls, I have been never been empanelled on a jury, I am excused whenever I am called for jury duty. I’ve wanted the experience for myself and am quite frustrated I cannot participate, although as you suggest I would probably be beating my head against the wall by the end.
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“how rare it is now in American life to be gathered, physically, with an array of other folk of different ages, backgrounds, skin colors, beliefs, faiths, tastes, education levels and political convictions”
I’ve often thought this was the only serious argument for high school.
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Eliot, I would guess that the problem is your profession. Lawyers on both sides would prefer not to have someone on the panel who can debunk the psychological games they play during trial.
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Wrong title.
It’s neo-tribalism – or mimetic-Tribalism. Tribes based not on shared genes, but shared memes.
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