Seventh Amendment The Seventh Amendment continues a practice from English common law of distinguishing civil claims which must be tried before a jury absent waiver by the parties from claims and issues that may be heard by a judge alone.
Amendment VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Although not specified in the 10th Amendment, the U. Supreme Court rules that parties in civil cases may agree to waive their Seventh Amendment right to a jury, and have the dispute resolved by a judge instead.
In Capital Traction Co. Hoft , based on the common-law tradition in England, the U. Supreme Court rules that a civil jury is to have 12 members. In Maxwell v. Dow , based on the common-law tradition in England, the U. In Minneapolis and St. Louis R. Bombolis , the U. Supreme Court rules that the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in civil cases does not apply to civil trials in state courts.
Sign in. Log into your account. Password recovery. Recover your password. Forgot your password? Get help. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. To many Americans, jury trials seem to be the normal way of deciding civil cases.
Television programs and movies show exciting scenes of juries deciding important non-criminal disputes involving individuals, government officials, and companies. The reality is different. Juries decide less than one percent of the civil cases that are filed in court.
This lack of jury trials may seem strange, as the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to jury trial in certain civil cases. There are two main types of court systems in the United States: federal and state. The Seventh Amendment requires civil jury trials only in federal courts. This Amendment is unusual.
The U. Supreme Court has required states to protect almost every other right in the Bill of Rights, such as the right to criminal jury trial, but the Court has not required states to hold civil jury trials. Louis Railroad Co. Bombolis Nearly all of the states, however, have rights to civil jury trial in certain cases in their state constitutions.
The United States is almost the only nation that continues to require civil jury trials. Civil juries similar to those in the United States are not part of the legal traditions of the Continent of Europe or the legal systems derived from those traditions, including in Latin America and Asia. Even in England and its former colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, civil jury trial has virtually been abolished. Why did some persons at the founding of the United States think that civil jury trial was so important that it should be guaranteed in the federal and state constitutions?
To understand the Seventh Amendment, we need to go back into history and the English legal system. The civil jury was an old English institution, older even than the criminal jury. Since the middle ages, the English had used juries of persons not trained in law to decide certain civil cases. There were always some English courts that did not use juries. In these courts, judges decided cases. The most important of these juryless courts was Chancery, also known as Equity. In the eighteenth century, as the desire of American colonists for independence from Britain grew, the jury in America became more important.
The British government claimed that Americans had to obey laws enacted by the British Parliament, in which Americans had no representation. Americans did participate on colonial juries, and these juries became a way for Americans to govern themselves.
As tensions with Britain rose, juries nullified refused to follow hated British laws, especially laws for collecting taxes. Because colonial juries had been valuable in the struggle against Britain, Americans put rights to civil and criminal jury trial into their new state constitutions immediately after declaring independence in By the time the federal Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in , opinions about the civil jury were more mixed.
Because state civil juries had been sympathetic to debtors, Federalists in particular feared nullification of the laws of contract.
For this and other reasons, the federal Constitution that was presented to the states for ratification did not include a right to civil jury trial. In the state ratifying conventions for the federal Constitution, Anti-Federalists strongly protested the lack of a right to civil jury trial. They expressed concerns about debtors, and also argued that juries could protect litigants from bad laws passed by the legislature, tyrannical actions by the executive, and corrupt or biased judges.
Fearing that a second constitutional convention might be called if a right to civil jury trial were not included in a federal Bill of Rights, James Madison drafted what became the Seventh Amendment.
The Seventh Amendment has two clauses. In interpreting the Seventh Amendment, judges soon encountered a problem.
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