Rights Held Hostage: Race, Ideology and the Peremptory Challenge

Abstract

This Article addresses the Supreme Court's application of the Equal Protection Clause to the selection of juries in criminal trials. Focusing on Black-white relations, it takes the position that efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection are successful only to the extent that they also eliminate the result of the discrimination- racial subjugation of Blacks through the criminal justice process. By this measure, the Supreme Court's recent jury selection cases are an abject failure.

Keywords: voir dire, jury selection, peremptory challenge, race, Equal Protection Clause, Fourteenth Amendment, Rodney King, Powers v. Ohio, Georgia v. McCollum, colorblindness