 All of the Court 's prior jury pool discrimination cases had involved the exclusion of African @-@ Americans and been litigated under the Fourteenth Amendment 's Equal Protection Clause . The Court had come the closest to articulating a " fair cross @-@ section of the community " doctrine in Smith v. Texas ( 1940 ) . There , the Court stated : " It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community . " 
