On Jury Duty: Point Two: The Whole System is Screwball

The system itself is often dumber than the people wrangled in. For all its specifics on a number of important points, the jury duty summons letter skips a basic bit of information. It doesn’t say, “You will, without question, be here until lunch the first day. If you are selected, you will be present through lunch for the length of the trial. You may bring lunch into the building.”  In fact, it says nothing about eating whatsoever. Nobody on my panel was under any illusion of getting sequestered and fed by the courts (though all of us seemed to know that part.) … Read the rest