Widening Batson’s Net to Ensnare More Than the Unapologetically Bigoted or Painfully Unimaginative Attorney

In Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its commitment to rooting out racially discriminatory jury selection and its belief that the three-step framework established in Batson v. Kentucky is capable of unearthing racially discriminatory peremptory strikes. Yet the Court left in place the talismanic protection available to those who might misuse the peremptory challenge—the unbounded collection of justifications that courts, including the Supreme Court, accept as “race neutral.” To evaluate the Court’s continuing faith in Batson, we conducted a survey of all federal published and unpublished judicial decisions issued in this first decade of the new millennium (2000–2009) that reviewed state or federal trial court rejections of a Batson challenge. In light of this study and studies that have come before, we conclude that Batson is easily avoided through the articulation of a purportedly race-neutral explanation for juror strikes. As a result, there is no reason to believe that Batson is, as the Court suggests, achieving its goal of eliminating race-based jury exclusion and little hope that it will ever do so. In light of our conclusion, this Article proposes an alteration to the Batson framework that we believe would enable trial courts to reduce the role of race in the jury selection process

A study of two aspects of socioeconomic disadvantage and the school success of seventh grade Negro students in a Hanford, California, junior high school

It is true that not all investigations have disclosed any significant effects of social class upon school success; however, many research studies have demonstrated the desirability or continued investigation. What seems to be needed in particular is the identification of social and economic phenomena which appear to have significant effects upon student achievement. In view of this need, this study has as its purpose the examination of the relationship between two aspects of socioeconomic disadvantage and the school achievement of seventh grade Negro students in a Hanford junior high school. For the purposes of this study a socioeconomically disadvantaged child is characterized by two factors: (1) he has no father living at home with him; (2) the financial support of the family is received from a public subsidy agency. Satisfactory school achievement is defined as not being more than one-half a grade behind because of grade failure. School failure, therefore, is defined as failure for two or more semesters. Schools must have a great concern with these children. Today, education is an increasingly vital force in our society. This has not always been considered true. Only a few years ago education was important as a matter of prestige and self-gratification and was not considered overly important as a means of obtaining a job. In today's world of technological change and automation, however, we face the problem of providing occupational opportunity for the inadequately trained and the uneducated. One of the rewards of education today is personal economic security and a better chance to live as a cooperative, productive citizen in the community. The socioeconomically disadvantaged child has little chance to live as a contributing, productive member of society. The few that do are exceptions to what seems to be a general rule. The culturally deprived youth matures into the deprived parent and produces offspring who in turn become parents producing another generation of underprivileged children. These are the children of failure