Definition
An archaic term for a member of a jury; a juror. The term appears in older legal texts and documents as a simple synonym for juror and carries no independent legal meaning beyond that designation. It does not distinguish between grand jurors and petit jurors, nor does it carry any technical significance beyond membership on a jury panel.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A member of a jury.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A juryman is defined as a man who is impaneled on a jury or who serves as a juror.
The common and legal meanings are essentially identical. The only gap worth noting is gender: "juryman" and "jury man" historically implied a male juror, reflecting the long exclusion of women from jury service. Modern law uses "juror" without gender distinction.
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Common Confusion
JURY MAN / JUROR: These terms are functionally interchangeable in historical sources. Researchers should treat "jury man" as an older stylistic variant of "juror" and apply the same legal framework. The term does not signal a specialized role or a distinct procedural status.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a flag for document age. When "jury man" or "juryman" appears in a primary source, it signals pre-twentieth-century material — likely nineteenth century or earlier. Researchers working in historical case files, court records, statutes, or treatises should recognize the term immediately as equivalent to "juror" and cross-reference modern doctrine accordingly.
The gender implication carries historical research weight. Women were formally excluded from federal jury service until the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, and the path to full inclusion varied significantly across state jurisdictions. A document using "juryman" may reflect not just archaic style but a substantively different jury composition than modern law requires.
Burrill himself notes the term is "little used" even at the time of his dictionary's compilation, suggesting it was already receding from active legal vocabulary in the mid-nineteenth century. Researchers encountering it in sources predating that period should weigh it as standard usage; in sources after it, the appearance of "jury man" likely reflects either stylistic archaism or regional practice.
For corpus navigation: searches using "juror," "jury member," or "petit juror" will recover the substantive doctrine. "Jury man" functions as a surface-level variant, not a doctrinal category.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only shelf entry, and it is minimal: "One of a jury; a juror. Little used." The entry confirms the term's synonymous relationship to "juror" and its declining currency even in Burrill's era. No historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus offers a more developed treatment, which itself reflects the term's lack of independent doctrinal content.
The absence of entries in Bouvier, Black, or other major historical dictionaries reinforces Burrill's characterization. This is not a term of art — it is a period descriptor that never accrued its own body of doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
No jurisdictional variation attaches to this term itself. Variation in jury composition requirements, qualification standards, and selection procedures exists across jurisdictions, but those are attributes of the underlying institution, not of this label.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia — Mistrial and Hung Jury (criminal_212)
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia — Grand Jury: Fifth Amendment in Grand Jury Proceedings (criminal_169)
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