Without Peers

Abstract

This writing will, in two parts, trace the development of Anglo-American law in regard to women and jury service from the early Anglo-Norman jury to the present American system. In this long history, women were largely excluded from the public world of the legal system. As criminal defendants, they did not face a jury of their peers. The first part examined the limited participation of women in the legal system in medieval and early modern England, colonial America, and the new American nation ending with their entry into the public world and the victory of women's suffrage in the United States. This second part examines the twentieth century legal, and political, struggle for women's full participation in the American jury system.