National Center for State Courts

A premier jury-related information Web site belongs to the Center for Jury Studies of the National Center for State Courts: http://www.ncsconline.org/Juries/home.htm Two staff members—G. Thomas Munsterman and Paula Hannaford-Agor—are among the handful of most noted jury scholars in the United States.  From this homepage, one can access the content of the site, which includes the following:

Key reports on three topics are available under the heading “Completed Projects:” Are Hung Juries a Problem?, Juror Discussions in Civil Trials, and Juror Privacy.

There is a link to allow one to subscribe to the Center for Jury Studies’ free weekly email jury newsletter Jur-E Bulletin.  This very useful publication that reports on and provides links to the latest happenings related to juries.  There is also a link for browsing back issues of the Jur-E Bulletin.

The “Publications” heading lists some items available for purchase, and some items available on-line in their entirety, free-of-charge.  The free on-line reprints of Tom Munsterman’s “Jury News” columns from Court Manager magazine are particularly enlightening.

A wealth of information can be accessed toward the bottom of the webpage under “Jury Topics.”  There are six relevant topics—Jury Management, Jury Trial Innovations, Jury Decision Making, Jury Selection, Jury Outreach, and Managing Notorious Trials, most of which have four subtopics—Overview, Resource Guide, FAQs, and Other Documents.  (There is also one other topic, Grand Juries, that we will not discuss here because grand juries are not covered by our Web site).  The contents of the Overview and FAQs links are just as their names suggest.  The Resource Guides consist of helpful topical bibliographies, although not all of them are completely current.  Other Documents provides links to many important jury-related scholarly papers published by NCSC.  The highlights include:

• Jury Management

  • Through the Eyes of the Juror: A Manual for Addressing Juror Stress

  • Jury Size

  • State Links: Juror Pay

  • State Links: Juror Information [on-line handbooks, etc.]

• Jury Trial Innovation

  • State Links [to most states' jury improvement reports]

• Jury Decision Making

  • Dial “M” for Misconduct: The Effect of Mass Media and Pop Culture on Juror Expectations