The People's Peremptory Challenge and Batson: Aiding the People's Voice and Vision Through the 'Representative' Jury

• Author: Andrew E. Taslitz
• Position: Visiting Professor of Law and, as of August 2012, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University; former Assistant District Attorney, Philadelphia, Pa
• Pages: 1675-1712

1675

The People’s Peremptory Challenge and

Batson: Aiding the People’s Voice and

Vision Through the “Representative” Jury

Andrew E. Taslitz

I. INTRODUCTION: THE JURY AND THE BODY OF THE PEOPLE ................. 1677

II. OCULAR JUSTICE .................................................................................. 1679

A. OCULAR DEMOCRACY: AN OVERVIEW .............................................. 1679

1. The Gaze ............................................................................... 1679

2. Candor .................................................................................. 1681

3. Candor’s Benefits ................................................................. 1681

a. Revelation ........................................................................ 1681

b. Egalitarianism ................................................................. 1682

c. Solidarity .......................................................................... 1683

4. Tweaking Ocular Democracy .............................................. 1684

B. JURY TRIALS AS OCULAR DEMOCRACY ............................................. 1685

1. The Criminal-Procedure Protections of the

Bill of Rights ......................................................................... 1685

2. The Candid, Eventful Trial .................................................. 1688

a. Limited Government-Witness Image Control ...................... 1688

b. Eventfulness ..................................................................... 1690

c. Face-to-Face Confrontation ................................................ 1691

C. JURY DIVERSITY AND ITS LINK TO HUMBLED LEADERS AND THE

PEOPLE’S SOLIDARITY ..................................................................... 1692

1. All the People ....................................................................... 1692

a. Groupiness ....................................................................... 1692

b. Scorn ................................................................................ 1694

i. Active Scorn ............................................................ 1695

ii. Passive Scorn ........................................................... 1696

2. Humbling Our Leaders and Their Agents ......................... 1698

3. Seeing with All the People’s Eyes ........................................ 1702

 Visiting Professor of Law and, as of August 2012, Professor of Law, Washington

College of Law, American University; former Assistant Distri ct Attorney, Philadelphia, Pa.; J.D.,

University of Pennsylvania, 1981; B.A., Queens College of the City University of New York,

1978. The author thanks Professor James Tomkovicz for his invitation to participate in this

symposium.

1676 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 97:1675

III. VOCAL (DELIBERATIVE) DEMOCRACY .................................................. 1706

A. POPULIST DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND THE CONSTRUCTED

VOICE ............................................................................................ 1706

B. RACIAL DIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE’S VOICE ................................... 1707

IV. CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................... 1710

2012] THE PEOPLE’S PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE 1677

I. INTRODUCTION: THE JURY AND THE BODY OF THE PEOPLE

Batson v. Kentucky famously held that the Equal Protection Clause

prohibits prosecutors from purposely using peremptory challenges to excuse

jurors because of their race.1 This Essay argues that understanding Batson’s

original social function first requires understanding the jury’s political

functions.2

Courts and commentators often speak of the jury’s role as representing

the “People” or the “community” in the courtroom.3 But what does that

mean? Jurors are not elected like members of Congress, and juries are too

small to provide an adequate sample of the public’s views.4 This Essay argues

that a kernel of an answer to the question of what it means for a jury or a

prosecutor to “represent” the People lies in Batson and its precedential

children. That answer in turn has implications for justifying Batson,

modifying it, and bringing its spirit into ethical training in prosecutors’

offices.

My argument here is two-fold. First, the jury “represents” the People by

acting for the good of the People as a whole in performing tasks that all the

members of the People could not themselves collectively perform. It is not

the content of any particular jury verdict—guilty or not guilty—that matters

but the very process of jury observation and deliberation that itself brings

about political benefits on behalf of all the People.5 The jury does not,

therefore, simply mirror preexisting views of the People on a particular

case6—there are no such views—but rather engages in a process of verdict

1. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 89 (1986).

2. My focus is on Batson’s original context: the racially discriminatory use of peremptories

by prosecutors, not on the various other contexts to which later cas e law extended Batson. See

Antony Page, Batson’s Blind-Spot: Unconscious Stereotyping and the Peremptory Challenge, 85 B.U. L.

REV. 155, 164–66 & nn.47–51 (2005) (summarizing case law extending Batson to defense

counsel, civil cases, gender, and ethnicity).

3. See, e.g., AKHIL REED AMAR, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: CREATION AND RECONSTR UCTION 94–

96, 100 (1998) (insisting that juries represent the People); Eric L. Muller, Solving the Batson

Paradox: Harmless Error, Jury Representation, and the Sixth Amendment, 106 YALE L.J. 93, 97 (1996)

(arguing that a jury “represents the community”).

4. For a detailed discussion of the problem of sample size in deliberative political

institutions, see JAMES S. FISHKIN, WHEN tHE PEOPLE SPEAK: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND

PUBLIC CONSULTATION 18–20 (2009).

5. Defending the very ideas of a “common good” and of a “People” is beyond the scope

of this Essay. The social reality of these concepts is assumed. See generally Andrew E. Taslitz, The

Jury and the Common Good: Synthesizing the Insights of Modern and Postmodern Legal Theories, in FOR

THE COMMON GOOD: A CRITICIAL EXAMINATION OF LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL 312–50 (R.

Robin Miller & Sandra Lee Browning eds., 2004) [hereinafter The Common Good] (defending

the idea of a common good, particularly in the context of the jury t rial); ANDREW E. TASLITZ,

RECONSTRUCTING THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: A HISTORY OF SEARCH AND SEIZURE, 1789–1868,

at 71 (2006) [hereinafter RECONSTRUCTING THE FOURTH AMENDMENT] (offering one definition

of peoplehood).

6. See TASLITZ, RECONSTRUCTING THE FOURTH AMENDMENT, supra note 5, at 31–32

(explaining the “mirror theory” of political representation).