Voir Dire

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Thanks to Batson and associated cases, we now have an uneasy working rule on voir dire in U.S. courtrooms: In exercising peremptory strikes, you can pick and choose on any basis…other than discriminatory ones. Basing strikes on race, ethnicity, gender, nationality and some other demographic categories is not allowed. That prohibition, however, is widely considered […]

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A newly-published study about the effects of voir dire in capital cases suggests that social scientists and the courts may need to reconsider a long-held tenet. For at least the past 35 years, the belief has been that jurors exposed to the process of jury selection in capital cases, known as

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Many have observed the continued decline of the civil jury trial. One reason trial by jury is falling out of favor in civil disputes is that parties and counsel treat it like the ultimate mystery, and this uncertainty makes the alternate ways to resolve the dispute look a lot safer.

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Jury selection presents a difficult challenge to trial lawyers, and calls for skills that are generally out of step with the rest of what they’re expected to master in order to get from filing to verdict. At the point of empaneling a jury, lawyers are expected to listen more than