Jury Selection

Jury selection gets a dedicated chapter that treats voir dire as structured advocacy rather than improvisation. It maps the six core objectives — supporting cause challenges, exercising peremptories, educating the panel, building rapport, neutralizing negative views, and obtaining commitments — and walks through pool, summons, panel composition, oath, and questioning regimes across federal and state practice. Subsequent sections cover question types, theories of selection (impressionistic, character-based, social-science-driven), and the modern role of LLM-assisted question drafting and bias scoring. Misconduct, currying favor, and Batson-relevant removal limits round it out. Particularly suited for trial advocacy courses with a mock voir dire exercise, the chapter gives professors a complete framework for graded student selection performances.