Jury Duty Merits Your Attendance–Please Dress Well For Jury Duty

I had jury duty recently here in Harris County, Texas.

I attended this jury duty just as all citizens should do when they get a summons.

I was not picked for a trial.

Attending jury duty does not mean you assume that people on trial in the courthouse will get a fair shake. I think that many are wary about justice in harris County and in Texas.

What it means is that you have been called do your civic duty, and you have to do that just like any other citizen.

If you don’t want to go for some moral or ethical reason, then make that known and accept the consequences.

Above you see some of the things I took to jury duty. I was prepared to sit in the big jury assembly room for as long as required.  I did end up in that room for over two hours.

I had a book and two magazines. The book I had was The President Makers: The Culture of Politics & Leadership in the Age of Enlightenment 1896-1919. This book, published in 1940, is by Matthew Josepheson.

I had two magazines. I had a baseball preview magazine and a copy of the excellent New Scientist.

I also had a copy of the United States Constitution. I carry the Constitution with me all times.  We can’t allow Tea Party/Republican Party extremists to make off with our founding documents. The Constitution is a flexible document able to adapt to the needs of society as times change.

Here is an article in the online magazine Slate that discusses the Constitution as a document able to meet the challenges of the times.

Do you think that people who have been dead for 200 years now could have fully imagined  the world as it is today? We can move forward without losing the freedoms and rights that we have long held in our nation.  To insist otherwise is to offer a false choice.

You’ll please note that there is a necktie in the picture above.

I wore a tie to jury duty. What could merit greater respect than our common society?

Not many of the men were wearing ties in the jury hall.

I don’t see what is casual about deciding the fates of fellow human beings.

This is could be seen as a somewhat conservative position on my part. Yet when our so-called “conservatives” are in fact radicals, and when so much day-to-day conduct is characterized by ill- disciplined and ignorant behavior, it often falls upon the liberal to preserve and defend what is best in our society.

Please go to jury duty when you get a summons. Please dress for jury duty in way that suggests you respect others and that you respect yourself.