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The article discusses the legal aspects of negotiating peremptory challenges (PCs) which allow litigants to remove otherwise qualified prospective jurors from a jury panel without any showing of cause as of January 2014, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky which deals with remedies for race- and gender-related abuses of the PC process. According to the article, negotiating PCs could protect the rights of excluded jurors and preserve party autonomy. Human behavior and the motivations of attorneys are also examined.

The article discusses the constitutional right of equal protection in the U.S. and a trial court procedure called a Batson challenge that protects defendants from race discrimination by prosecutors who make peremptory challenges in jury selection decisions. Such a Batson challenge reportedly derives from the U.S. Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky. The article discusses doctrinal and practical considerations regarding awarding a new trial to defendants when a Batson challenge cannot be resolved in the trial court. Also discussed are the aforementioned case and the U.S. Supreme Court case Snyder v. Louisiana.

This article presents a discussion of the issues involved in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. California. The Court ruled that California's procedure for evaluating a defendant's objections to the prosecution's peremptory challenges based on race placed too high a burden on the defense to establish a prima facie case of such discimination. The Court ruled that California did not follow the "more than likely" standard of Batson v. Kentucky. The Court held that California's standard failed to comply exactly with the Batson guidelines instead of evaluating whether or not it was constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.