Recent Research:

Politics in Civil Jury Selection

When lawyers undertake the civil-jury selection process, they often look for clues that, they hope, will provide insight into a potential juror’s political outlook. To many lawyers,a juror’s political perspective is so important that litigation teams nationwide spend time and resources determining whether a prospective juror has donated to or is affiliated with a political party. If such an inquiry is fruitless, even more time may be spent trying to deduce party identification. Does a certain juror have on his car an Obama sticker, a McCain sticker, or any sticker indicating candidate preference? When summoned on the first day of trial, is a particular juror reading about the virtues of Reaganomics or is she more interested in learning about how left-leaning approaches to economic stewardship are a recipe for financial success? Does a juror appear to be pro-choice, pro-death penalty, anti-tax, anti-government, or pro-environment?

These inquiries assume that when a person’s political compass is revealed, a host of other litigation-related attitudes, beliefs, and opinions become evident and will reveal how a juror will render a verdict. Especially for attorneys who are involved in politics, the most imperative task for providing insight into how jurors will assess damages is to determine jurors’ political points of view.

Specifically, the thinking goes, the more left-leaning or liberal someone is, the more likely it is that the person will be receptive to rendering large damage amounts and assigning punitive damages and the less likely that he or she will place limits on the amount of money juries can award. Conversely, many attorneys believe that if someone tilts right, or is more conservative, the person is less likely to award money and to support punitive damages and is more interested in “tort reform.” During voir dire, and through written questionnaires, many attorneys go to great lengths to discern where potential jurors fall on the political spectrum so the attorneys can use that information to make inferences about how each juror will determine appropriate damage awards.

Given the recent elections and the nation’s attention on the political process, Zagnoli McEvoy Foley (ZMF) analyzed recent mock trial data in an attempt to determine if political leaning and damage assessments are intertwined.