The Bench For the Love of Jury Duty

The celebrities assembled last week by the Postal Service to launch a new stamp in honor of jury duty had one thing in common: none had ever served on a jury. "I've been down here, but I was never picked," Bernadette Peters said, as she waited for the ceremony to begin, in the rotunda of the New York County Courthouse building downtown. Ditto Cindy Adams, the Post gossip columnist. Paulina Porizkova, the model, recalled, "When I was called, I was pregnant, and I wasn't hormonally ready for a jury." The actor Richard Thomas is in the middle of a national run as Juror No. 8 in the stage version of "Twelve Angry Men." "According to the rules of show business, that entitles me to speak as an expert," he said.

The festivities were delayed for the arrival of Mariah Carey, who teetered into the courthouse on five-inch heels half an hour after the unveiling was to start. (Explaining her own failure to perform jury service, she said, "I was on tour.") At the ceremony, Carey said little. "It's so early," she began, before a microphone that had been affixed to her clingy black dress fell to the floor. "It's very important to do your part in this wonderful country where we live," she went on, before adding, again, "It's so early." (It was noon.)

Credit for the cheerfully off-kilter proceedings, as well as for the idea for the stamp itself, belonged mostly to Judith S. Kaye, the chief judge of the State of New York, who seemed to find no dissonance in the idea of civic exuberance over an act that many people find as worthy of commemoration as waiting for the cable guy. The occasion happened to take place on September 12th, the twenty-fourth anniversary of Kaye's début as a judge on New York's highest court, and through all those years the touchstone of her career has been an evangelical faith in the wisdom of juries.

Kaye, who was the force behind the change in New York law which abolished nearly all job-related exemptions from jury duty, speaks with the sort of exaggerated care that one might expect from an eminent judge, but she also has a mischievous smile that suggests a more street-smart sensibility. In conversation, she avoids the term "jury duty" and instead speaks of "jury service." "I see both the privilege and the burden of serving on a jury, but I put the accent on the positive," she said.

After the solemn procession of an honor guard and the singing of "God Bless America" by Daniel Rodriguez ("the singing policeman," who is now retired from the N.Y.P.D.), it was time for what Kaye called "the big moment." She tugged at a blue banner printed with the Postal Service logo and revealed the design of the new stamp. The forty-one-cent model features silhouettes of twelve faces in profile. The group reflects an unmistakable ethnic diversity, and one woman has unaccountably messy hair. "Jury Duty," the stamp reads. "Serve with Pride."

The celebrities left quickly after the ceremony ended, but Kaye invited some of the guests (including a group of high-school students) to lunch upstairs. Even after the usual long wait by the courthouse's elevators, she remained euphoric as she presided over buffet tables set up in a fourth-floor courtroom. "You know, they're only printing forty million of the stamps," she said. "That hardly seems enough."