Discuss the two policy concerns that drove the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress to establish that the pool from which a jury is selected must be a representative cross-section of the community.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.In a series of decisions and lawmaking, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress established the requirement that the pool from which a jury is selected must be a representative cross-section of the community. These decisions were driven by two policy concerns, each of which includes psychological assumptions.First, the government believed that if the pools from which juries were drawn represented a broad cross-section of the community, the resulting juries would be more heterogeneous. That is, they would be composed of people who were more diverse with respect to age, gender, ethnic background, occupation, and education. The courts assumed that this diversity would produce various benefits-for example, that minority group members might discourage majority group members from expressing prejudice. This assumption seems logical; casting a wider net will yield members of smaller religious and ethnic groups whose presence might reduce outright prejudicial remarks.Another assumed benefit was that heterogeneous juries would be better fact finders and problem solvers. Extensive research on the dynamics of groups shows that, other things being equal, groups composed of people with differing abilities, personalities, and experiences are better problem solvers than groups made up of people who share the same background and perspectives. Heterogeneous groups are more likely than homogeneous groups to evaluate facts from different points of view and to have richer discussions.The second policy reason for the Court and Congress's decisions on representativeness is related to the appearance of legitimacy, rather than to the jury's actual fact-finding and problem-solving skills. Juries should reflect the standards of the community. When certain components of the community are systematically excluded from jury service, the community is likely to reject both the legal process and its outcomes as invalid.