Recent Developments: The Right to a Fair Cross-Section of the Community and the Black Box of Jury Pool Selection in Arkansas

A Washington County, Arkansas court conducted a hearing on October 15, 2018 on a criminal defendant’s motion to compel discovery to assure a fair and accurate cross-section of the community for the jury as guaranteed by the United States and Arkansas Constitutions. At the hearing, the jury coordinator for the Circuit Clerk’s office testified that counties may elect to use a state-sponsored jury selection computer program, or they may use proprietary programs. Washington County uses a proprietary computer program to select the jury pool from a list of registered voters. The clerk described how her office takes an extra step to follow up with property owners, thus making them more likely to be summoned for jury duty. When discussing individuals who cannot afford phone service or who do not have voice mail, she stated, “You can’t talk to them. So I don’t reach that person.” She did not know how individuals with criminal records are excluded from the pool so that individuals with duplicate names – which is common, for example, in the Hispanic community – are not excluded. When asked about her system of calling and leaving messages, she stated she does not have a translator because “I’ve never had anyone talk to me that I couldn’t understand.” Although the United States Supreme Court has noted that “without inspection, a party almost invariably would be unable to determine whether he has a potentially meritorious jury challenge,” the Washington County judge concluded that the details of the process and software used for creating the venire are “not discoverable in this case because. . .you have not presented any evidence you would find anything.

The individual revolution: The social basis for transition to democracy?

A shift toward greater emphasis upon the individual within society, or individuation, accompanies advanced industrial development. The construction of the individual as an autonomous actor is a precondition of a democratic political culture, but not a determinate of democratization. A democracy without the support of a culture that perceives the individual as an independent and equal social and political actor would have no social basis for the protection of individual liberties. Democratic rights are designed to guarantee the integrity of a particular conception of the social category of the individual which considers the individual to be of greater significance than the collective. These theoretical issues are explored in a combination of survey data and three case studies of social phenomena underlying the collapse of communism in the German Democratic Republic. Some manifestations of individuation, such as the development of an apolitical public sphere (civil society) and the multiplication of social identities, contribute to greater pluralism in society through the diversification of social groupings and categories. This increased pluralism, in addition to the social dynamics of overlapping ingroups, is conducive to social tolerance and a decrease in social control as the multiplicity of social groups presents one with a wide array of possibilities for fulfilling one's social needs and makes one less dependent upon any single group for social benefits. In this manner these manifestations of individuation create a more democratic political culture. Other possible channels of individuation, such as modern consumerism, do not possess democratic elements and threaten to deflect needs for individuation from active public expression and undermine the potential of the development of a democratic political culture. Within the peculiar Marxist-Leninist context contradictory authoritarian and democratic, political and apolitical, public and private phenomena became politicized and anti-authoritarian and undermined authoritarianism. The development of an individuated political culture opened up the realm of political possibilities to democracy.Ph.D.Political ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/103604/1/9332082.pdfDescription of 9332082.pdf : Restricted to UM users only