Female Representation on State Grand Juries:

The Supreme Court has acted to eliminate discrimination against women on state petit juries and blacks on state grand juries. The next step is a Court decision eliminating sex discrimination on state grand juries. The Court could achieve this by applying the standard used to measure unacceptable race discrimination to sex discrimination. That standard assumes racial discrimination if there is an opportunity to discriminate and systematic disproportion of racial representation. This article discusses how the standard works, and then focuses on a study of the comissioner system in two Texas grand jury jurisdictions (Dallas and Houston) to illustrate its potential application to female exclusion.