this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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US Authoritarianism

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Hello, I am researching American crimes against humanity. . This space so far has been most strongly for memes, and that's fine.

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[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Since you have a list going, add jury service to it. Even after women were allowed to be summoned, lawyers would strike them for cause on the grounds that they were too temperamental or could not focus enough. And then after that wasn't allowed, lawyers would strike them all with peremptory challenges, until finally in like 1980 or something the Supreme Court had to step in and say "if you start striking women and it seems like you're just striking women, the judge should ask you why, and if you can't give reasons, your challenges will be denied."

A lot of people like to shit on jury service, likes it's no big deal, but I think it's one of two or three of the most patriotic and freedom loving things people can do for their country, up there with joining the service and voting. Like anyone that wants to talk to me at all using words like liberty or justice, better turn up when it's time to talk about jury service, or else they expose themselves as full of shit.

Sometimes it wasn't that grandma couldn't have a bank account and suffered financial dependence, it was that even if she needed a jury to sort through some bullshit, men could make sure it was men that judged her conduct.

A prosecutor once told me that the worst juror to have when trying to convict a rapist is a woman whose never been raped, because to convict they must first admit the fact it could happen to them; that's a hard fact to force on soneone. With that same logic, think of how men might judge a woman who leaves or defends herself from an abusive husband, or takes her kids somewhere safe, etc.