Compulsory Jury Duty Is Illegal And Unconstitutional As It Is

Compulsory Jury Duty Is Illegal And Unconstitutional As It Is

This legal argument will be quite quick because it’s ridiculously easy for me to expose the logical fallacy with SCOTUS’ decision in making compulsory jury duty an exemption to the 13th Amendment. Let’s look at what it says about involuntary servitude first.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Now, the 13th amendment was ratified sometime in the year 1865. It makes one exception to involuntary servitude and that’s when you’ve already been convicted of a crime and are therefore a prisoner. That makes sense. But where is the exception for jury duty here? There isn’t. 

In some court cases, SCOTUS has continuously reaffirmed its position on jury duty over the decades without any strong basis. One is Butler v. Perry, 240 U.S. 328 (1916) where SCOTUS claims certain aspects of involuntary servitude are “historically exempt.” Or a court case like United States v. Kozminski (1988) which describes involuntary servitude as needing an ingredient for something more than just “psychological coercion." This is why SCOTUS thinks jury duty is an exception and calls it a “civic duty,” because of historical adoption and their acceptance of psychological games. The latter is absolutely ridiculous, to say the least. 

SCOTUS says jury duty was historically practiced in past decades which is true. But a historical practice does not mean it was ever constitutionally correct to begin with. That’s where the line needs to be drawn. Furthermore, you have to go back to see what the lawmakers in 1865 had to say about it, which is when the 13th Amendment was officially ratified, not what SCOTUS had to say about it over half a century later. What did the 1865 lawmakers say about jury duty being an exception to that amendment? Nothing. You won't find any of them writing about it.

SCOTUS wants to believe that lawmakers in the far past must have thought jury duty was an exception despite the lack of actual written affirmation of this by lawmakers in 1865. Since nobody explicitly wrote that jury duty was exempt in 1865, I could therefore easily argue that the 1865 lawmakers didn’t like jury duty enough to make a clear exception for it in the 13th amendment. Now you see the logical fallacy on the part of SCOTUS. There is no credible reasoning for anything SCOTUS says with regards to jury duty being exempt from the 13th amendment.

Knowing all of this, I now have something to ask of SCOTUS. Can they show me the constitutional text or contemporaneous evidence by lawmakers at that time demonstrating that compulsory jury service was excluded from the term ‘involuntary servitude?’ They cannot simply point to the fact that jury service existed and then assume that its existence created a constitutional exception. But that is exactly what SCOTUS did here anyway.

The government cannot convert a categorical constitutional prohibition into a qualified prohibition merely by labeling a particular form of compelled service a “civic duty.” If jury service is exempt, the onus is on the government to demonstrate why it falls outside the constitutional meaning of “involuntary servitude,” rather than just merely asserting that it does from an obscured premise.

Conclusion 

I think this is the final nail in the coffin for compulsory jury duty being outside the constitutional scope of involuntary servitude as it’s clearly not. Jury duty as it is, is illegal and unconstitutional, period. There’s no credible or valid reasoning behind what SCOTUS has said about it. It’s merely their sheer authoritative will power that keeps it within its “legal status.” 

The solution for this is very simple. You don’t need to send a piece of mail threatening people with arrest, jail, warrants or fines if they fail to show up for their jury service. All you need to do is send a piece of mail asking the public to do voluntary jury service and that you will be compensated generously for your troubles and for taking the time out of your day to do this service. That is it. The government would be surprised to see how many people would show up for jury duty if they offered for example $1000 to each juror instead of the $25 you normally get for being dragged to a courthouse against your will.