The Case Against Anonymous Juries

• Author: Jane E. Kirtley
• Pages: 27-32

Published in Litigation, Volume 48, Number 1, Fall 2021. © 2021 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be

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“Fairness, the Appearance of Fairness,

and Public Confidence in the System”

The Case Against

Anonymous Juries

JANE E. KIRTLEY

The author is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and

Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

In the classic 1949 comedy-drama Adam’s Rib, legendary actors

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play married lawyers—

Adam and Amanda Bonner—who find themselves on opposite

sides of the high-profile prosecution of New York housewife

Doris Attinger for the attempted murder of her philandering

husband. The sophisticated battle of the sexes offers prescient

observations about societal and legal inequities and the differ-

ence between following the letter of the law and doing justice.

In my law classes, I play excerpts from this film to demonstrate

how women attorneys have been portrayed in popular culture

over time. While watching the film again recently, I was struck by

how the screenwriters—another legendary couple, Ruth Gordon

and Garson Kanin—depicted the jury selection process in the

criminal trial court in Manhattan.

The sequence begins with the bailiff calling the first name

drawn from the jury wheel:

Bailiff: Paul Hurlock. Take your coat with you, please.

Place your left hand on the Bible, raise your right hand. You

do solemnly swear that you will true answers maketo all ques-

tions put to you upon the several challenges touching upon

your competence as a fair and impartial juror in this proceed-

ing between the people of the state of New York and Doris

Szabo Attinger, so help you God?

Hurlock: I do.

Bailiff: Be seated. State your full name and address.

Hurlock: Paul Hurlock, 1731 Boylston Avenue, New York City.

After establishing that Hurlock’s occupation is in “infants’

headgear,” assistant district attorney Tracy’s perfunctory voir

dire asks Hurlock whether he is acquainted with any of the par-

ties to the case. Upon receiving a negative response, Tracy deems

the potential juror acceptable to the People. But when defense

counsel Hepburn asks Hurlock, “Do you believe in equal rights

for women?” and Hurlock replies, “I should say not,” Hepburn

successfully challenges him for cause, because, as she explains,

I submit that my entire lineof defense is based on the proposi-

tionthat persons of the female sexshould be dealt with, before

the law,as the equals of persons of the male sex. I submit that

I cannot hope to argue this line before minds hostile to and

prejudiced against the female sex.

Another turn of the wheel yields the name Benjamin Klausner.

After being sworn in, Klausner confirms the correct spelling of

his name, and when asked to state his address, he responds, “107