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46 Colum. J.L. & Soc. Probs. 1 (2012-2013)
Jury Duty Is a Poll Tax: The Case for Severing the Link between Voter Registration and Jury Service

handle is hein.journals/collsp46 and id is 7 raw text is: Jury Duty is a Poll Tax: The Case for Severing the Link Between Voter Registration and Jury Service ALEXANDER E. PRELLER* Federal jury service has been formally connected to voter registration since 1968. Congress intended for this linkage to improve the American jury system by increasing representation of groups previously excluded from the jury pool. However, as legislative inaction and judicial acquiescence have exacerbated the economic costs of jury service, this practice has also para- sitically burdened the right to vote, creating a 'self-disenfranchising incen- tive. This Note argues that jury duty is sufficiently burdensome, and that this burden sufficiently impacts voting, so as to constitute a poll tax in vio- lation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is a simple, effective solution to this problem: prohibiting the use of voter registration lists to create jury lists, and instead using any number of available alternative sources to create a representative jury pool. I. INTRODUCTION People hate getting jury duty.! Even those who enjoy serving on a jury report that they try to avoid it whenever possible.2 One * Articles Editor, COLUM. J.L. & Soc. PROBS., 2012-13. J.D. Candidate 2013, Co- lumbia Law School. The author would like to thank Professors Jamal Greene, Richard Briffault and Mark Barenberg, as well as the Journal's editorial staff, for their help. 1. See generally KB. Battaglini et al., Jury Patriotism: The Jury System Should Be Improved for Texans Called to Serve, 35 ST. MARY'S L. J. 117 (2003); Mark A. Behrens & M. Kevin Underhill, A Call for Jury Patriotism: Why the Jury System Must be Improved for Californians Called to Serve, 40 CAL. W. L. REv. 135 (2003) (both describing citizens' negative feelings about jury service and arguing for reforms to the jury system).

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