Are Women Peers?

Abstract

Under Magna Carta, freemen were judged by peers. As Scutt observes, women tried, convicted and hanged by all-male juries and judges, prosecuted by men and represented by male defence counsel lacked jury rights. Women were condemned as witches because Hale said witches existed in law and the Bible. As ‘non-persons’, women could not be jurors, judges, prosecutors or defence counsel. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton asserted women’s jury rights. Canadian, US, UK, Aotearoal New Zealand and Australian women campaigned for jury rights equal to men. Defence counsel said women favoured accused in rape cases, then claimed women favoured rape victims/survivors. Only in the late 20th century were women acknowledged as peers’, to sit, like men, on juries deciding guilt or innocence — of women and men alike.