Trial by Jury

Americans, by and large, tend to regard jury duty as a smaller-scale version of the draft—less dangerous, perhaps, but equally frustrating and at least as pointless, since jury trials are not much likelier to arrive at the truth than the medieval trials by fire, water, and combat that they replaced. I have heard it stated as a commonplace of legal practice that in cases where there is a choice between trial by judge and trial by jury, the defense attorney will choose judge if his client is innocent, jury if he’s guilty, on the grounds that juries are swayed by personal prejudice, or a lawyer’s eloquence, or anything except the facts. Hence the general impression that there’s no point in an intelligent person’s serving as a juror even if he would like to, because he’ll never be put on a case. (Although I did read once about W. H. Auden having to reschedule a meeting with the Stravinskys because he was on jury duty. I remember thinking at the time how amusing it was that a foreigner had so thoroughly embraced our American notions of civic duty—quite forgetting what country we inherited them from.)

So, when I received my summons to serve my term at the New York County Courthouse, I instantly got on the phone to a lawyer friend and asked him if there was any lawful way of getting out of it. “In the first place,” he said, “no. They’re short of jurors, and they’ve made it very hard to exempt. But anyway, why would you want to get out of it?”

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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Americans, by and large, tend to regard jury duty as a smaller-scale version of the draft—less dangerous, perhaps, but equally frustrating and at least as pointless, since jury trials are not much likelier to arrive at the truth than the medieval trials by fire, water, and combat that they replaced. I have heard it stated as a commonplace of legal practice that in cases where there is a choice between trial by judge and trial by jury, the defense attorney will choose judge if his client is innocent, jury if he’s guilty, on the grounds that juries are swayed by personal prejudice, or a lawyer’s eloquence, or anything except the facts. Hence the general impression that there’s no point in an intelligent person’s serving as a juror even if he would like to, because he’ll never be put on a case. (Although I did read once about W. H. Auden having to reschedule a meeting with the Stravinskys because he was on jury duty. I remember thinking at the time how amusing it was that a foreigner had so thoroughly embraced our American notions of civic duty—quite forgetting what country we inherited them from.)

So, when I received my summons to serve my term at the New York County Courthouse, I instantly got on the phone to a lawyer friend and asked him if there was any lawful way of getting out of it. “In the first place,” he said, “no. They’re short of jurors, and they’ve made it very hard to exempt. But anyway, why would you want to get out of it?”