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Opinion of the Court
the other is among the imponderables. To insulate the courtroom from either may not in a given case make an iota of difference. Yet a flavor, a distinct quality is lost if either sex is excluded." Id., at 193-194 (footnotes omitted).
Fifteen years later, however, the Court still was unwilling to translate its appreciation for the value of women's contribution to civic life into an enforceable right to equal treatment under state laws governing jury service. In Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U. S., at 61, the Court found it reasonable, "[d]e-spite the enlightened emancipation of women," to exempt women from mandatory jury service by statute, allowing women to serve on juries only if they volunteered to serve. The Court justified the differential exemption policy on the ground that women, unlike men, occupied a unique position "as the center of home and family life." Id., at 62.
In 1975, the Court finally repudiated the reasoning of Hoyt and struck down, under the Sixth Amendment, an affirmative registration statute nearly identical to the one at issue in Hoyt. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (1975).5 We explained: "Restricting jury service to only special groups or excluding identifiable segments playing major roles in the community cannot be squared with the constitutional concept of jury trial." Id., at 530. The diverse and representative character of the jury must be maintained " 'partly as assurance of a diffused impartiality and partly because sharing in the administration of justice is a phase of civic responsibility.' " Id., at 530-531, quoting Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U. S. 217, 227 (1946) (Frankfurter,
5 Taylor distinguished Hoyt by explaining that that case "did not involve a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community," 419 U. S., at 534. The Court now, however, has stated that Taylor "in effect" overruled Hoyt. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828, n. 1 (1991).
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