In honor of RBG we’re spending this week featuring some of our favorite ladies who have accomplished extraordinary, often crazy, things. But before we get rolling, a very brief refresher on why folks in Louisiana should be fans of the late Supreme Court justice.
Most of y’all already know Ginsburg argued equal rights cases which benefitted widowers, fathers, working moms, and women in the military. But you may not know she helped shape how every jury in the United States is populated. And in the South that’s especially important.
Remember “Twelve Angry Men,” the drama about a dozen male jurors arguing the fate of a Puerto Rican boy who stabbed his father? It wasn’t called “Twelve Angry Jurors” because juries used to be—and this is an official legal term—total sausage parties. The idea of women on juries was so laughable before the 20th century that it was very literally a punchline in colonial Dad Jokes.
Women were legally excluded from being able to serve in the courtroom in the United States due to "propter defectum sexus,” aka their “defect of sex.” Diplomatic legal eagles said women, due to their consuming duties around the home, simply couldn’t be asked to sit in court all day. But Sir William Blackstone, the guy who made sure the “defect of sex” angle was written into law, was less artful in his explanation. Women were, he and similar lawmen argued, too emotional, dumb, or irrational to be trusted with jury duty. With their hysterical uteruses and petit cortexes, females simply couldn’t be allowed to disrupt the manly fist of justice. (Even though Lady Justice herself was, you know, a lady…with specular tricep and shoulder strength.)
But around the mid-20th century the League of Women Voters and National Woman’s Party started demanding ladies be granted access to serve in the courtroom. After all, how could a female defendant be judged by jury of her peers if HER peers were purposefully excluded? Male judges of the time even began to agree, writing that juries needed to be diversified to be “truly representative of the community.”
For the record? Sir Blackwell was wildly incorrect about women on juries. Not only were ladies obviously intellectually fit to serve, but their emotional IQ and values meant fairer verdicts. Juries which include women are less likely to sentence a violent criminal to death; more likely to solidify convictions for sexual offenders; have fewer hung juries when the defendant is female; and choose shorter sentences for non-violent drug possessors not planning on distributing those drugs. Turns out if you have to defend yourself in court, you actually want to see ladies on your jury.
1942 was the first year a verdict was struck down because an all-male jury was deemed too discriminatory to the defendant. This paved the way for Ginsburg’s 1973 case “Healy vs. Edwards” in Louisiana. At the time our state and many others had “optional jury service” for women, meaning female jurors called to service could opt-out if they felt too busy with home duties. But the rule meant juries could be, and often were, still all-male, which is bad news if you’re a female defendant or POC being judged for a violent crime. Ginsburg argued optional service laws were discriminatory and created problems for defendants entitled to a fair trial. She fought similarly in 1979’s “Duren vs. Missouri,” which ruled that opt-out policies were indeed biased and unconstitutional.
These cases and a handful of others—most notably “Taylor vs. Louisiana,” another local landmark—argued by Ginsburg and her collages delivered us to the present, where women are now a widespread and fully participating piece of the legal system in all 50 states. We’ve even had all female juries, though no one wrote any plays about it.
Check back for more seriously impressive accomplishments from the defective sex all week!