Dooley on National Juries
Laura Dooley (Valparaiso) has posted an article entitled National Juries for National Cases: Preserving Citizen Participation in Large Scale Litigation. Here is the abstract:
Procedural evolution in complex cases seems to have left the civil jurybehind. The trend toward centralization of cases pending on the sametopic in one court results in cases of national scope being tried bylocal juries; this reality is a catalyst for forum shopping and afrequent justification for calls to eliminate jury trial in complex cases altogether. Yet the juryis at the heart of a uniquely American understanding of civil justice,and the Seventh Amendment still mandates its use in federal cases. Thisarticle makes a bold new proposal designed to preserve theconstitutional and functional value of citizen participation in thecivil justice system by aligning the juryassembly mechanism with the scope of the litigation. Thus, in cases ofnational scope, juries should be assembled from a national pool. Thisidea would eliminate incentives to forum-shop into local jurypools, and would make the decisionmaking body commensurate with thepolity that will feel the effects of its decisions. We might alsoexpect a higher level of legitimacy for decisions rendered by anational jury in national cases because they would not be subject to the criticism that a local jury is imposing its values on the rest of the country, and because geographical diversification of the jury would enhance the quality of decisionmaking.
ADL
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