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Showing posts from September, 2007

Jury Representiveness Redux – A Lament for a Good Measure

Having proposed or otherwise advocated for various performance measures that have not seen the light of a court day, I should be accustomed to the low use of measures that I happen to believe have high value. But, alas, I continue to puzzle over why one such measure in particular – jury representativeness -- is not used more by courts. Jury representativeness – as I defined it in a two-part Made2Measure posting on April 12 and April 22 last year – is the comparative parity (i.e., the absence of disparity) -- expressed as a percentage -- between the representation of minority groups in the population and the representation of the same groups in the final juror pool or venire. How well juries mirror the community from which they are drawn is widely considered a reflection of the equality, fairness and integrity of our justice system. Arguably, identifying a combination of demographic characteristics as the source referent -- including gender, age, income level, and education -- may be b