Judicial Fairness

2 Pages 559 Words

There are many aspects of the law that attempt to make a sure a jury or a judge is fair in handling legal matters. The Fifth and Fourteenth amendments provide that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The procedural due process aspect of this amendment requires that government decisions to deprive a person of life, liberty or property must be done fairly. The procedural due process law gives an accused person the chance to object to his accusation before a fair and neutral decision-making body. The Sixth amendment also guarantees rights for the Muslim defendants to a jury trial and to a public trial. Through our legal history, we have created legal methods and traditions to apply these freedoms in a court of law.
In our legal system, the two main sources of neutral decision makers are juries and judges. The law has a way of ensuring that these bodies are neutral and unbiased in their decision-making. While it will be impossible to gain complete neutrality, the law provides mechanisms within which fairness can be maximized.
The process of voir dire attempts to minimize the bias a jury can have. Voir dire is the process of jury selection, which takes place before a trial can begin. In this process the attorneys for the defendant and plaintiff ask a group of potential jurors questions to determine whether that jury member has any bias towards his or her client. In the context of Muslim and Arab-Americans, the attorney for the defendant can probe the prospective jurors on his or her sentiments towards Muslims and determine whether his or her feeling would bring a bias into her decision making process. If the attorney for a Muslim or Arab-American defendant instinctively feels that a juror is biased, the attorney is afforded by the legal system the peremptorily challenge. With a peremptorily challenge, an attorney can ask that a potential juror not be sworn in without pr...