For nearly my entire life, I have heard the woes of jury duty; you have to miss an entire day of work, go to the court house at 8:30 in the morning and wait around in a stuffy room for the entire day just to see if a case might be able to use you. Admittedly, when I got my first summoning a few weeks ago, I was immediately filled with dread.
As a full-time college student, I knew I would be able to defer my date for up to six months, a privilege only available to college students and the elderly. In the passing days after my first letter came, however, my mind became boggled with the question, why do we even have jury duty? What do I, an 18-year-old college student, get out of participating? It was difficult to come up with any answers at first, as I have heard nothing but negative things about the mandatory civil duty. As I thought more about it, I began to realize that jury duty is almost as essential to the American political sphere as voting is; it is an opportunity for one to cast their decision in an event that could potentially change the political, economic and social ways of society. Keeping with that train of thought, I began to ponder what this meant for me and my peers, as we have had extremely low political participation rates for the past 50 years, and people thoroughly enjoy to disparage us for it. As the result of all of these factors, I ultimately came to the realization that jury duty is a very important and necessary act, especially for college students, in that it provides an opportunity for our generation to make our voices heard on issues that could potentially change the law and benefit everyone in the future and to prove to people who think negatively about our generation that we are not the lazy and dumb people we are made out to be.
Before further delving into how important jury duty is, it is imperative to answer the question, why did it even get formed in the first place? In U.S. history, jury duty and the right to a jury by one’s peers was first declared in the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. In order to assure that all trials were conducted fairly and people felt that they weren’t being cheated by the justice system (as they felt during their time under British rule), Congress created this amendment. The founders of this amendment knew that if they made jury participation mandatory, it would give citizens another medium to voice their opinions about issues within society and make people on trial feel safer knowing they had a jury of their peers.
As previously mentioned, one of the aspects that makes jury duty so important is its way of allowing people another way to express their opinions about current issues and potentially aid in changing an unjust law. Especially in today’s society, where many people’s voices are being silenced, it is imperative that we do whatever we can to protect our opportunities to voice our opinions within the political world. In terms of college students, this is particularly crucial, as a 2010 study done by Harvard University found that the majority of U.S. laws do not favor the younger generation of 18-25 year olds. By participating in jury duty, college students are able to project their viewpoints and desires on certain topics, and by doing so, create the potential for preexisting laws to be altered or new laws to be designed that benefit them.
Another added advantage for college students who participate in jury duty is it provides a way for our generation to prove to older generations we are not entitled, lazy and ignorant. Many people who criticize our generation base their argument in our overwhelmingly low political participation, as I noted beforehand. Speaking for myself and all of the other people in my age range who are politically active, these criticisms should not be representative of our generation. This is where participating in jury duty and recognizing the importance of it help to disprove these criticisms because we can now show that we are actually politically aware and concerned, and not ignorant and dumb.
From these remarks, it is easy to see why Thomas Jefferson once called the jury system and jury duty, “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” Although most people in America view it as an unnecessary evil, it is important for these people, especially college students, to realize jury duty plays a vital role in our ability to represent ourselves and our opinions within society, something many other citizens of many other countries do not possess. Instead of disparaging jury duty, let’s learn to be grateful for it and use it to its full potential.
