Staff Reports
John Stossel’s new column about his recent New York jury‑duty experience should be required reading for anyone who still thinks government runs as efficiently as private business. He paints a simple scene: a paper summons, long waits, broken water coolers, shuttles between buildings — and then the polite shrug that tells you your time doesn’t matter. It’s not an isolated gripe. It’s a snapshot of how court bureaucracy treats jurors like spare parts, not citizens.
A day wasted: what Stossel actually reported
Stossel says roughly 80 prospective jurors sat around for hours, moved from room to room, and were finally told to come back on another day. Paper summonses still arrive by mail, clerks read long instructions aloud, and simple fixes like staggered start times or text alerts are not used consistently. The result was lost wages, missed appointments, and families rearranging their lives for nothing. That’s not just annoying — it’s an everyday cost paid by taxpayers and by people who can’t afford to lose a day of work.
The tools already exist — so why the delays?
This isn’t a technology problem so much as an implementation problem. New York’s court system already offers a juror portal, email and text‑alert options, and virtual orientation materials. Procurement documents show courts have outbound‑texting capabilities and the ability to automate notifications. Other states and federal courts have tested on‑call systems and eJuror options. The bottleneck isn’t the toolset — it’s local practice, inconsistent rollouts, and inertia inside a system with no real competition or market pressure to improve.
Why bureaucracy resists change
Here’s the blunt truth: when an organization spends other people’s time and other people’s money, it tends not to care. Courts employ many hardworking people, but the system rewards procedure over efficiency. No airline or bank would get away with telling customers, “Come back in five days,” yet that’s standard operating procedure in too many courthouses. If you want quicker service, you go where someone else will do it better. Courts don’t have that option, so they don’t feel the sting of wasted time — only taxpayers do.
Simple fixes that would save jurors time and save taxpayers money
Stagger arrival windows, let jurors wait at home until notified, send texts or emails instead of relying on paper, use short orientation videos, and adopt instantaneous transcription technology so a human doesn’t have to type every word. These are not moonshots; they’re low‑cost, commonsense reforms already piloted elsewhere. Courts can modernize without sacrificing fairness. If judges and administrators care about civic duty, they’ll stop treating jurors’ time as expendable and start treating taxpayers’ money with a little more respect.
