Jury Duty Is a Lot Like Fourth-Grade Softball. Here’s Why

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I don’t know about your fourth-grade gym teacher, but mine followed a barbaric custom still in practice in many otherwise forward-looking institutions. She let the kids choose their own teams.

You remember how it goes. The teacher chooses the captains. The captains choose the players. The whole fourth grade lines up across the gymnasium floor. There, one’s fitness to play ball, to be on the team, one’s very right to take up space on the planet, is decided by a 9-year-old with dirty fingernails pointing one of them at you.

Or not pointing one of them at you.

Same goes for jury duty. Many are called to the jury room, but few are chosen to actually sit in the jury box. Read all about one woman’s unshakable desire to be among the chosen at any cost at “A Case of the Human Condition: Choose Me, Please!”

A Case of the Human Condition: Choose Me, Please!