Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 48

14 

RAMOS v. LOUISIANA 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part 

v. Mississippi, 588 U. S. ___ (2019).

In my view, Apodaca warrants the same fate as Swain. 
After all, the “requirements of unanimity and impartial se-
lection thus complement each other in ensuring the fair per-
formance  of  the  vital  functions  of  a  criminal  court  jury.” 
Johnson, 406 U. S., at 398 (Stewart, J., dissenting).  And as 
Justice Thurgood Marshall forcefully explained in dissent 
in  Apodaca,  to  “fence  out  a  dissenting  juror  fences  out  a 
voice from the community, and undermines the principle on 
which our whole notion of the jury now rests.”  Johnson, 406 
U. S., at 402 (Marshall, J., dissenting in both Johnson and 
Apodaca).

To  be  clear,  one  could  advocate  for  and  justify  a  non-
unanimous  jury  rule  by  resort  to  neutral  and  legitimate 
principles.  England  has  employed  non-unanimous  juries, 
and various legal organizations in the United States have
at times championed non-unanimous juries.  See, e.g., Ju-
ries Act 1974, ch. 23, §17 (Eng.); ABA Project on Standards 
for  Criminal  Justice,  Trial  By  Jury  §1.1,  p.  7  (App.  Draft 
1968); ALI, Code of Criminal Procedure §355, p. 99 (1930).
And  Louisiana’s  modern  policy  decision  to  retain  non-
unanimous juries—as distinct from its original decision in 
the  late  1800s  to  adopt  non-unanimous  juries—may  have
been motivated by neutral principles (or just by inertia). 

But the question at this point is not whether the Consti-
tution prohibits non-unanimous juries.  It does.  Rather, the 
disputed question here is whether to overrule an erroneous
constitutional  precedent  that  allowed  non-unanimous 
juries.  And  on  that  question—the  question  whether  to 
overrule—the Jim Crow origins and racially discriminatory
effects  (and  the  perception  thereof )  of  non-unanimous
juries in Louisiana and Oregon should matter and should 
count heavily in favor of overruling, in my respectful view.
After all, the non-unanimous jury “is today the last of Lou-
isiana’s  Jim  Crow  laws.”    Aiello,  supra,  at  63.  And  this 
Court  has  emphasized  time  and  again  the  “imperative  to