Many Americas regard the jury system as a concrete expression of crucial democratic values, including the principles that all citizens who meet minimal qualifications of age and literacy are equally competent serve on juries; that jurors should be selected randomly from a representative cross section of the community; that no citizen should be denied the right to serve on a jury on account of race, religion, sex or national origin; that defendants are entitled to trial by their peers; and that verdicts should represent the conscience of the community and not just the letter of the laws. The jury is also said to be the best surviving example of direct rather than representative democracy. In a direct democracy, citizens take turns governing themselves, rather than electing representatives to govern for them.
许多美国人将陪审团制度当作重要的民主价值观的具体体现方式，这项制度包括了以下原则，即：所有满足最小年龄和最低文化程度要求的人都具有可以在陪审团任职的同等资格；陪审团成员应该从社会各阶层中随机选取；任何公民在陪审团任职的职责都不能因为他的种族、宗教、性别或是民族而被拒绝；被告有权利被地位与他们相当的人审讯；判决的结果不能只体现法律条例的字面意义，同时也要体现社会的良知。陪审团也被称为是直接民主而不代议制民主最好的现存实例。在直接民主的体制中，公民轮流管理自己，而不是选出代表来为他们管理。
But as recently as in 1968, jury selection procedures conflicted with these democratic ideals. In some states, for example, jury duty was limited to persons of supposedly superior intelligence, education, and moral character. Although the Supreme Court of the United States had prohibited intentional racial discrimination in jury selection as early as the 1880 case of Strauder v. West Virginia, the practice of selecting so-called elite or blue-ribbon juries provided a convenient way around this and other antidiscrimination laws.
然而直到1968年，陪审团的甄选程序依旧与这些民主理念相矛盾。比如在有些州，承担陪审团职责的，仅限于那些被认为拥有高智商、良好教育和道德品质的人。尽管早在1880年，在Strauder诉西弗吉尼亚州的案件上，美国最高法院就禁止在陪审团成员甄选中存在刻意的种族歧视，但是选择那些所谓的精英或者蓝领陪审员的做法仍然为绕过那些反歧视条例提供了一条便捷的途径。
The system also failed to regularly include women on juries until the mid-20th century. Although women first served on state juries in Utah in 1898, it was not until the 1940s that a majority of states made women eligible for jury duty. Even then several states automatically exempted women from jury duty unless they personally asked to have their names included on the jury list. This practice was justified by the claim that women were needed at home, and it kept juries unrepresentative of women through the 1960s.
直到20世纪中期，在陪审团成员中需定期包括女性成员方面，这项制度同样是失败的。尽管在1898年的犹他州，女性就第一次在州陪审团上担任陪审员，可是直到20世纪40年代，大多数的州才使得女性有承担陪审团成员职责的资格。但即使这样，有些州依旧会自动将女性从承担陪审团职责的人选中剔除，除非她们亲自要求将她们的名字加入到陪审团的名单中。因为声称家庭需要女性，所以这样的做法被认为是合理，这就导致了整个20世纪60年代陪审团都无法代表女性。
In 1968, the Congress of the United States passed the Jury Selection and Service Act, ushering in a new era of democratic reforms for the jury. This law abolished special educational requirements for federal jurors and required them to be selected at random from a cross section of the entire community. In the landmark 1975 decision Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court extended the requirement that juries be representative of all parts of the community to the state level. The Taylor decision also declared sex discrimination in jury selection to be unconstitutional and ordered states to use the same procedures for selecting male and female jurors.
到了1968年，美国国会通过了《陪审团甄选和服务法案》，开启了陪审团民主改革的新纪元。这项法律废除了对联邦陪审员特别的教育要求，并要求联邦陪审员需要从全社会的各个阶层中随机选出。1975年，在具有里程碑意义的Taylor 诉路易斯安那州的裁决上，最高法院将陪审团需要代表社会各阶层的要求扩展到了州的级别。Taylor案的裁决也同时声明了陪审团甄选中出现的性别歧视是违反宪法的，并要求各州使用相同的程序来甄选男性和女性陪审员。
