Voting and Jury Service: Our Duty and Privilege

I was recently called for jury duty and had the honor to be chosen and take my place in the box as juror number eight. Although I had worked as a trial attorney arguing before juries, presided as a judge over numerous jury trials, and have considered selection and numerous other jury issues as an appellate justice, I had never before actually been called to serve on a jury myself. The experience reminded me that a foundational pillar of our judicial system is citizen participation. It is through individual service that the “community judgment [may be] represented by the jury in criminal trials.” Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 535 (1975). Indeed, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that, “with the exception of voting, for most citizens the honor and privilege of jury duty is their most significant opportunity to participate in the democratic process.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 401, 407 (1991).

This of course brings us to the topic we are celebrating today. Voting, like jury service, is also a fundamental necessity of our society as well as an avenue for individual voices to be heard. Thus, these two acts, voting and jury service, are our duty and privilege as citizens. Women were denied that duty and privilege, and our society was denied their necessary voice, for far too long. The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 resulted in the largest grant of voting rights since our nation’s founding. This year we commemorate that grant, in which fully half of eligible voters, who had long fought for equality, were finally granted the civil rights that placed them closer to equal footing with their male counterparts. As women gained the right to vote, they were able to contribute more fully as citizens of the United States, taking steps toward establishing their place in the reciprocal relationship between the people and the government that is at the heart of our constitutional order. However, the 19th Amendment, standing on its own, did not immediately guarantee full participation for women, inasmuch as true citizenship speaks not only of rights and status but also the duties and obligations between the citizens and the government. The Supreme Court did not fully acknowledge the necessity that women should also be jurors until 55 years after women were granted the right to vote, when it struck down a Louisiana law that automatically exempted women from jury service. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. at 531.

The recent unprecedented events have many of us considering our obligations to each other more than ever before. As we battle the spread of novel coronavirus, I am reminded of how important it is that we exercise our duties and responsibilities as citizens and community members to protect each other and to protect the rule of law. At the time I am writing this, we have all been advised to stay in our homes unless our work is essential, to keep physically distant from those outside our immediate household, and to work together to “flatten the curve” and reduce the spread of a pandemic. The steps we are all taking to deal with COVID-19 are dramatic. It is through our individual efforts—doing our duty to follow the advice of public health officials and thereby slow, and eventually stop, the spread of this virus—that we will find the fastest path to recovery and normalcy. But we cannot find that path if only some of the people follow the advice and exercise their duty as citizens. Instead, as with our democracy, it is vital now that we each exercise our rights and duties of citizenship to make a difference for ourselves and for each other.

The 19th Amendment passed in the immediate aftermath of two major historic events: the end of World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic. We find ourselves, 100 years later, again living through a time of great upheaval and uncertainty that, in the short term, has already led to societal changes. Although we have always had periodic opportunities to perform certain of our civil rights and civic duties, voting every year and attending jury duty perhaps every few years, we have suddenly been called upon by these unusual circumstances with the opportunity to perform a civic duty every day, in all of our actions, simply by staying inside if we are not performing essential work and by heeding the advice and direction of medical professionals and government officials. While we now have the obligation and the opportunity to serve in a unique way, I am sure that we will be happy to return to the more customary exercise of our rights and responsibilities—but perhaps with a renewed appreciation for the necessity of every single one of us to participate in civic society in ways large and small.