BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
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User ID: 3073
BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
5mo ago
Glad to be of service!
Race is probably correlated with lots of these things, but I would assume that initial selection is probably less affected by race than by these other factors.
I agree that jury selection is less affected by race than other factors. However, given the demographics of criminal charges, a black defendant is substantially more likely to face an all white jury than a white defendant is.
Furthermore, given the salience of juries racial composition, a lot more research has been done on it. In fact Anwar, Bayer, and Hjalmarsson (2022) show in a short, sweet, and much more convincing article that having a higher proportion of jurors from black dominated zip codes results in lower conviction rates and less harsh sentences for black defendants (Table 2). No multiple testing problems here, they only test the obvious outcomes!
They also have a paper from a decade earlier, ABH (2012) showing that juries with at least one black defendant are substantially less likely to convict black defendants (pg. 34.) Incidentally, the reduction of having at least one black juror with a black defendant almost exactly cancels out the greater chance of conviction from the defendant being black.
I'm sharing these papers from the authors I've already linked to, because I could spend all day listing papers looking at this question. I think it's pretty clear that having more black jurors means black defendants are less likely to be convicted. I think what is more interesting is the interpretation of this result.
BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
5mo ago
Do female jurors and male jurors act differently in important ways? The Irish Times article gives the example that female jurors are more skeptical of rape allegations and are more likely to acquit male defendants.
Hoekstra and Street (2021) use administrative data from Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties in Florida to show that are less likely to convict women of drug crimes (pg. 31). On all other crimes, there are no effects. They don't report effects of women generally, but judging by the graphs on pages 23-24 they don't seem to have much of an effect. (Incidentally, they also find slightly higher shares (between 51-53%) of women on juries in their sample.) They look at a large number of outcomes, but they do compute q-values so multiple testing doesn't appear to be an issue here.
In contrast, Anwar, Bayer and Hjalmarsson (2019) exploit a reform in England argue that juries with more women were more likely to convict in sex offense cases and more likely to convict in violent crime cases where the victim was a woman (pg. 36, 38, 40.) Personally, I find this paper less convincing simply because the specification used for a number of the claims is quite weak imo and the stronger specifications do not adjust for multiple tests. Also, it is not clear how applicable it is today.
Lehmann and Smith (2013) find in one specification that women are more likely to acquit (pg. 21). In five other specifications they find effects with the same sign but substantially smaller effect sizes which are not statistically significant. They also find that women are a slight majority in their cases, close to 57%. (They also find that the defense lawyers want more women on the jury.)
If you're curious about mock jury studies, I'd recommend looking at footnote 6 on page 3 from ABH (2019) which list a slew of studies disagreeing with each other.
In my braindead opinion, gender of jury is not talked about very much because it does not matter very much, or because it varies largely depending on place and time. Intuitively, this makes sense, because jury selection matters for trial outcomes. Lawyers are going to be thoughtful about who they select. In contrast, groups which are underrepresented on juries because they are disproportionately likely to be face hardship from serving, do have significant impacts on outcomes. I suspect this is why much of the conversation around jury selection focuses on race. In addition to all the other reasons.
BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
5mo ago
I agree that deportations were historically less common in the past (by a factor of 5 or 10 after adjusting for foreign born population size.) I think these deportations were still sizable representing around 1% of the immigrant population in 1880 around when the policies ended. I agree that if there were only minimum qualifications, I would consider the US had virtually open borders. I don't share the view that the only criteria were criminality, mental illness, or disability. Instead, it seems clear that some policies were specifically targeted at the Irish, and the poor Irish explicitly, in addition to the aforementioned criteria. The fact that the states with the largest ports had anti-immigrant policies makes me hesitant to characterize US policy as virtually open borders.
I agree that the lack of universality is important. Personally, I would welcome the devolution of immigration policy to the states. I suspect this would result in much higher levels of immigration.
BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
5mo ago
What? Ancient traditions of a 300 year old country? One that didn't even exist at the founding of the country and was just a quirk of a post civil war law meant to force Southern states to accept Blacks as citizens.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but birthright citizenship was an explicit component of British Common Law since 1608 (see pgs. 698-701), although it was not initially raised in terms of immigration. However, this legal paradigm was broadly accepted in the United States to apply to children of foreigners (see pgs. 706-708). There were two principal exceptions: children born of foreign emissaries and children born of occupying soldiers.
I can already hear you typing, "But Scarecrow, didn't Lord Coke also declare that infidels were perpetual enemies of the crown, and so could not gain citizenship?" This is true (See footnote 295). "Didn't the U.S. not extend citizenship rights to Native Americans who were born on U.S. lands?" This was true initially, but was changed. "Didn't the document you just link to say that citizenship was extended to 'the children even of aliens born in a country, while the parents are there under protection of the government...'" These are all true.
However, these facts do not imply that the tradition of birthright citizenship does not comport with its' practice today. Lord Coke's argument was specifically about infidels and with respect to the Christian religion. As the government of the United States was and is a secular state, there is no fundamental source of permanent opposition which could justify this position. American Indians were not granted citizenship because they were understood as citizens of treaty-making nations independent of the United States, and this was expressed by Chief Justice Marshall. Even children whose parents were deported were able to remain in the United States (see Expelling the Poor.
I recognize there is more of a debate to be had here, but I think you were far too dismissive and ignored the much older heritage of the idea.
BrainlessScarecrow
Not just a strawman
5mo ago
I believed this as well, until I read Hidetaka Hirota's excellent book Expelling the Poor. It documents very compellingly how states with major ports like Massachusetts and New York frequently turned away immigrants arriving from Ireland who were judged to be at risk of entering poor houses. Massachusetts actively deported Irish immigrants from poor houses, including some illegally deporting some Irish who were citizens of the US.
The reality is that prior to the federalization of immigration policy, states have more leeway than is discussed in popular culture to restrict immigration and did use it. While I think historical US policy was more welcoming to immigrants than the policies today, I do not think the US had a policy of virtually open borders.
I'm skeptical of in-group explanations. In both ABH (2012) and (2022) jury representation from black jurors or underrepresented neighborhoods is not sufficient to make up the full difference. This means that jurors of other races need to be complicit in the decisions as well.
(Incidentally, ABH 2012 makes the case even stronger. The authors say that black jurors were more likely to convict white defendants, but in reality that is not the case. Black Defendants in their sample appear more likely to convict everyone, but everyone equally. At least, that's my interpretation of Table 4. There is room for disagreement, and even after that disagreement it is no comment on the quality of decisions.)
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