Women's Jury Service: Right of Citizenship or Privilege of Difference?

Authors

Joanna L. Grossman, Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of LawFollow

Abstract

The Supreme Court recently declared that peremptory challenges based on sex, like those based on race, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this note, Joanna Grossman argues that the Court has finally established the right of women to serve on juries. Women's rights advocates had fought for this right for more than a century, but courts refused to recognize that women were harmed by exclusion from juries and denied any connection between women's jury service and citizenship. Instead, courts focused on gender difference and only eliminated legal barriers to women's jury service when it was necessary to uphold the rights of defendants. By contrast, the Court recognized the citizenship-based right of blacks to serve over a hundred years earlier. With this decision, the Supreme Court corrected this longstanding disparity in the treatment of race and sex in jury selection.

Publication Title

Stanford Law Review

Document Type

Note

Recommended Citation

Joanna L. Grossman, Women's Jury Service: Right of Citizenship or Privilege of Difference?, 46 Stanford Law Review 1115 (1994) (Note)