Against Zoom: Why Juries Need Courtrooms
![handle is hein.journals/osjcl22 and id is 108 raw text is:
Against Zoom: Why Juries Need Courtrooms
Nancy S. Marder*
INTRODUCTION
Although the COVID-19 pandemic led some courts to try online or virtual jury
trials, using new technologies like Zoom, juries need to return to actual courtrooms.
Even after the pandemic abated, some courts considered whether specific stages of
the jury process, such as voir dire, could be conducted online and then the jurors
who were selected could go to actual courtrooms for the trial.1 Courts viewed online
jury selection as more convenient for prospective jurors and cheaper, quicker, and
more efficient for courts. As tempting as online jury selection might appear at first
glance, courts need to resist it.
Courtrooms provide a unique setting in which ordinary citizens are transformed
into jurors. As I develop more fully in my book, The Power of the Jury:
Transforming Citizens into Jurors,2 every stage of the jury process, including the
summons, voir dire, instructions, and deliberations, aids in this transformation.
Citizens, who might be reluctant to serve initially, enter the courtroom and begin to
sense that their task will be out of the ordinary.3 The formal setting of the courtroom
reminds them that they must set aside their everyday obligations and concerns. It
also keeps them free from outside influences and distractions and allows them to
focus on becoming part of a jury. Once citizens have been summoned to the
courthouse and have entered the courtroom, the other stages of the jury process,
Professor of Law and Director of the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center, Chicago-Kent
College of Law. I want to thank members of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law for inviting me
to speak at and publish in their 2024 Symposium on the jury, To Speak the Truth, Modern Day Voir
Dire. I also want to thank participants at the Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference for their
comments when I presented this paper as part of a panel on Architecture of the Law, held at the
University of Toronto Faculty of Law on June 22, 2023, and for the comments of participants at
Washburn University School of Law's Symposium on Law in the Zoom Era: The Future of Virtual
Lawyering, where I presented an early version of this paper as part of a panel on Trial by Zoom: The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, on November 3, 2022.
1 See, e.g., Andrew Denney, Court System to Experiment with Virtual Voir Dire for Civil Jury
Trial, N.Y.L.J., June 7, 2022, https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2022/06/07/court-system-to-
experiment-virtual-voir-dire-for-civil-jury-trial/[https://perma.cc/637G-N48A] (describing a pilot
program in Manhattan, in which prospective jurors will receive summonses to appear for juror
orientation on Microsoft Teams--and potential selection for a one-day summary trial in a civil case. .
The remotely selected jury will have to appear in person at 60 Centre Street for the actual trial.).
2 NANCY S. MARDER, THE POWER OF THE JURY: TRANSFORMING CITIZENS INTO JURORS (2022).
3 Id. at 27-30.
105](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/osjcl22&div=9&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Against Zoom: Why Juries Need Courtrooms
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most