Casey B. Mulligan argues that we should pay jurors better:
Many people summoned for jury duty search desperately for excuses. Their efforts increase the burden on the court system, which has to summon and process a large number of people in order to empanel its juries. The court system might alleviate these problems by following the example of the modern military: recruit people for service by paying them far more than minimum wage. Jurors could still be selected randomly, but with a nice paycheck waiting for them, they would not try as hard (or at all) to be excused by the court.
Critics of a market-oriented recruitment system might say the pool of jurors would not fully represent the population because, among other things, people getting high pay in their normal jobs would be less willing to serve on a jury because of the loss of pay. But let’s not pretend that the conscripted jurors we have today are a random sample of the population.
The Dish 