WOMEN MAKE GOOD JURORS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 142, 15 May 1930, Page 11

WOMEN MAKE GOOD JURORS.

The following is culled from an American journal: — “Women are eligible to serve on juries in twenty-one of the American states. In only ten of these states, however, is 6uch service compulsory, and as matters work out, women jurors are practically limited to these ten. In twenty-seven states women are actually debarred from jury service despite organised efforts to gain the privilege. “Most parsons assumed that when the suffrage amendment took effect it would automatically carry with it jury service for women. This has not been the case in those states where court interpretation or legislative action blocked the way. In such states the battle to give women citizens the same status, privileges and duties as men must be fought all over again. “If it were an absolutely novel proposal, the effort to make women jury service universal might rouse reasonable doubts. But if is actually no new programme, but a seasoned success, in everyday practice in some of the biggest states. Experience _ indicates that women make as good jurors as the average man, or even better ones. The ten states with compulsory status are: California, Indiana, lowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota New Jersey, Ohio, Penny&lvania a-nd XJtali. Only too frequently, in these jurisdictions, it is' found that the best women and the poorest men are selected for juries, chiefly because of the exemptions now granted , to classes of men. Adding • women to. the jury

panel doubles the number of eligibles for service and doubles the potentialities of good juries. Actual experience, endorsed by. judges, and lawyers, indicates that the presenco of women raises the decorum of court proceedings, and that women , are no more influenced by their emotions in arriving at verdicts than are men, perhaps less. . “A chief criticism of women jurors seems to be that they want the laws enforced I At least, how otherwise can one explain the long and unsuccessful fight to install women in juries in New i’ork, Connecticut and Massachusetts P Proposals for this end have been defeated or buried in committee at least five times in New York, four times in Connecticut, and no less than eight times in Massachusetts. Experience shows that women jurors vote to have the law enforced—not just one law, but all laws. That is why judges generally seem to consider them good jury material and why, perhaps, certain state legislators oppose them. It is, indeed, a surprising fact that in states like New .York, where judges now bitterly compla'in of low jury competence, half the available material from which potential jurors might be drawn is ignored, and this, moreover, in the face of efforts of women’s organisations to win a place on the jurylist. Women’s organisations claim, correctly, that the educational value of jury service is unequalled. Both for the improvement of the machinery of justice and for the administration of justice itself, the intimate, firsthand experience of women in the jury box is of great value.