Legal Question in Constitutional Law in California

Re: laws stating we have to serve on a jury

While I don't have time at the moment to look up the relevant statute, there are indeed laws which make jury service mandatory. If you don't show up you run the risk of being arrested, and courts are increasingly using this power to ensure that jurors take their obligations seriously.

If you are arrested and brought before a judge for not reporting to jury duty, he or she will not care that, in your "opinion", jury service is not mandatory.

Our society imposes very few obligations on citizens. Jury service, taxes, military service (when there is a draft in effect) and responding to the census are the only ones which come to mind at the moment. Compared to what other countries require of their citizens, this isn't a lot to ask.

If jury service really were optional, almost everyone would opt out and there wouldn't be enough jurors to go around. If you are ever involved in a lawsuit or prosecuted for a crime you will probably want a jury, and the only way you will be able to get one is through compulsory service. It seems perfectly just to me that we all take part in this system, since we all will potentially need to take advantage of it ourselves at some point.