![\"2](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/06\/2-16.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI started to feel nostalgic for the old system. People nowadays \u2013 all in their own narrow, solipsistic worlds, nearly incapable of ordinary face-to-face sociability. And so on.<\/p>\n
But the explanation was much simpler. It was the two-day hitch. In the old system, social ties didn\u2019t grow from strangers seeking out others in the main jury room. It happened when you went to a courtroom for voir dire<\/em>. You were called down in groups of forty. The judge sketched out the case, and the lawyers interviewed the prospective jurors. From their questions, you learned more about the case, and you learned about your fellow jurors \u2013 neighborhood, occupation, family, education, hobbies. You heard what crimes they\u2019d been a victim of.\u00a0 When judge called a break for bathroom or lunch or some legal matter, you could find the people you had something in common with. And you could talk with anyone about the case, trying to guess what the trial would bring. If you weren\u2019t selected for the jury, you went back to the main jury room, and you continued the conversations there. You formed a social circle that others could join.<\/p>\n This time, on my first day, there were only two calls for voir dire<\/i>, the clerk as bingo-master spinning the drum with the name cards and calling out the names one by one. My second day, there were no calls. And that was it. I went home having had no conversations at all with any of my fellow jurors. (A woman seated behind me did say, \u201cCan you watch my laptop for a second?\u201d when she went to the bathroom, but I don\u2019t count that as a conversation.)<\/p>\n I would love to have written 800 words here on how New York character had changed since the 1970s.\u00a0 No more schmoozing. Instead we have iPads and iPhones and MacBooks destroying New York jury room culture \u2013 Apple taking over the Apple. People unable or afraid to talk to one another because of some subtle shift in our morals and manners. Maybe I\u2019d even go for the full Brooks and add a few paragraphs telling you what\u2019s really important in life.<\/p>\n But it was really a change in the structure. New York expanded the jury pool by eliminating most exemptions. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, judges \u2013 they all have to show up. As a result, jury service is two days instead of two weeks, and if you actually are called to a trial, once you are rejected for the jury or after the trial is over, you go home.<\/p>\n The old system was sort of like the pre-all-volunteer army. You get called up, and you\u2019re thrown together with many kinds of people you\u2019d never otherwise meet. It takes a chunk of time out of your life, but you wind up with some good stories to tell. Maybe we\u2019ve lost something. But if we have lost valuable experiences, it\u2019s because of a change in the rules, in the structure of how the institution is run, not a because of a change in our culture and character.<\/p>\n Cross-posted \u00a0at Montclair Socioblog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was on jury duty this week, and the greatest challenge for me was the “David Brooks temptation” to use the experience to expound on the differences in generations and\u00a0the great changes in culture and character that technology and history have brought. I did my first tour of duty in the 1970s. Back then you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":67323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,106,253,8118,290,140,37,3504],"class_list":["post-67322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-friendship","tag-history","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-internet","tag-social-psychology","tag-social-structure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/06\/2-16.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67346,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67322\/revisions\/67346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}