Noted jury expert professor Valerie Hans has recently written a thought provoking piece entitled Jury Representativeness: It's No Joke in the State of New York. The piece examines two New York studies that analyzed jury representation in the state. While the studies did not reveal any glaring discrepancies between census data and who actually sat on juries, they did show that certain minorities are underrepresented in the jury pool. Professor Hans goes on to discuss potential solutions to this inequity e.g., she suggests possibly applying social science techniques to jury selection.
It would be interesting to hear from others who have ideas on how to make the jury more representative.
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