This year more than 5 million American citizens will be called to service on a jury in their community. They will be taking part in one of our oldest and most powerful democratic traditions. Thomas Jefferson described the right to "trial by juries impartially selected" as the best of all safeguards of liberty and property.
Today, the privilege of serving as a juror is as valuable as it was two centuries ago when it was included in our Bill of Rights. That's something worth celebrating.
This once popular description of the jury is long out of date. Juries have changed to reflect important changes in American law and society. Today's juries are very different from the ones known to Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution. Verdicts need not always be unanimous, nor must juries always have twelve members. Some may have six, eight, or ten members. And of course jury service is no longer solely a male privilege.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, women participated only in a "jury of matrons" - a group called to inquire into the alleged pregnancy of a female prisoner. As late as 1941, the Supreme Court ruled that excluding all women, except members of the League of Women Voters, from federal jury lists was constitutional - an opinion that would be unthinkable today.
Racial discrimination in the jury selection process was made a criminal offense in the Civil Rights Act of 1875. But the practice of excluding minorities from juries persisted. In some Southern states, jury lists were compiled only from voter registration lists at a time when blacks were not permitted to vote. Recent court rulings on jury selection, including those by the Supreme Court, have taken a firm stand against any vestiges of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or economic status.
The American patriots who fought for independence from Great Britain were ready to lay down their lives for the principles they believed in.