The Jury in America

In The Jury in America Dennis Hale provides a comprehensive history of the American jury beginning with its forebear, the medieval jury in England, and ending with the postmodern jury and the vanishing jury trial. He focuses on the changing role of the jury and the challenge of finding qualified jurors. He suggests that the postmodern American jury is in decline because we focus on the representativeness of juries rather than on the quality of jurors. This is a provocative position with which jury scholars are likely to disagree. Hale characterizes the jury during the colonial period as working in partnership with the judge because jurors and judges had much in common. Most judges lacked legal training, and most jurors were chosen because they were well-respected white men with property and education. Hale focuses on New York and Massachusetts to give some flavor of juries during this period. He characterizes juries as being less important to the legal system and more important to the political system because of the role they played in governance

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