The Seventh Amendment…

Veritas Omnia Vincit sends us his thoughts on one of the lessor recognized Amendments, the Seventh. Taken at face value, it codifies the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases. But more importantly, it inhibits the courts from overturning a jury’s findings of fact. Here’s VOV:

…or Should We Keep This Outdated Idea?

Veritas Omnia Vincit

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.

This one is another amendment that seems rather simple at first glance, and for the most part it is, yet a little history expands our understanding of this amendment and reinforces the founders concern over property abuse by government. There is no tradition of Civil Juries in Europe or Latin America, or Asia. Even in England and its former colonies it’s mostly been abolished. However our civil jury system is in fact rooted in Old English law where certain cases not tried by the Chancery (a juryless court system deciding matters of property, equity such as trusts and land law) were instead given to courts where those not trained in legal matters could decide matters of law regarding civil cases. Where this came into play during the 18th century was the increasing tension between England and her American colonies and matters of civil law. Juries became increasingly reluctant to find in favor of laws enacted in England without colonial representation, and those juries became a way for the American colonists to nullify English law in civil matters here in the colonies.

As the struggle for independence grew and took a more rebellious and warlike nature most of the leaders of the revolution remembered those jury trials as a way of keeping the government under control by allowing common citizens the power to nullify those laws they found unjust. Interestingly enough by the time the Constitutional Convention came around in 1787 the Federalists among the founders were concerned that regarding civil matters that those civil juries had been far too sympathetic to debtors which led the Federalists to fear that these civil juries would nullify laws of contract. Thus the original presentation of the Constitution to the states did not include this seventh amendment’s right to civil jury trials. The anti-Federalists at the state levels protested that lack of the right to a civil jury trial and they had strong concerns about over arching government actions that would be incapable of being nullified in any court system if the citizens of the nation were excluded from the court process. There was now a very valid concern that a second Constitutional Convention might need to be called, consequently James Madison quickly drafted what became the seventh amendment as we know it today.

This amendment also only has two clauses as far as legal scholars are concerned, the Preservation clause ”In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved” and the Re-Examination clause, “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.” The preservation clause simply means what kinds of cases juries are required to decide while the far more important re-examination clause carries the weight of the amendment by preventing any federal judge from overturning these civil case jury findings.

In practice the civil jury trial uses a jury in less than 2-3% of all cases and some estimates today indicate that perhaps that number has dropped to 1% or less. Largely due to the expense involved with civil jury trials and the relatively unpredictable nature of a jury hearing different sides and reaching some manner of conclusion. It’s created in the legal profession a sense that settling after an agreement is a far better option to resolve these cases because of that expensive unpredictability. Ms. Renee Lettow Lerner a professor of law at George Washington University Law School has advocated for the repeal of the seventh and a better focus on investigative options to find the true facts in these cases in order to come to a fair finding.

While I respect Ms. Lerner’s much larger understanding of the law and her years of teaching that larger understanding, I find on principle that we should never repeal any amendment that leaves some of the power against the government in the hands of the American people. Perhaps the true power of this amendment is the unpredictable nature and the expense of getting to that unpredictable outcome. That threat of an unknown, unpredictable outcome has driven lawyers on opposing sides of these issues to reach a settlement that is agreeable to each of the parties to these actions. That minimizes the amount of time the courts are tied up with hearing these cases, and actually speeds up the process. One might argue that the parties reaching a settlement they both find acceptable is more beneficial to our society as well as once the matter is settled both parties feel the matter is now in the past and we move forward from that point without litigation hanging in the balance for years as it slogs through the court system.

The Seventh Amendment may indeed be another of the “lesser, or no longer needed” amendments, or it may in fact be the motivator for adversarial litigants to find common ground that is acceptable rather than proceed through the courts.

As with all these essays, this is hardly a scholarly article, just the ramblings of a layman whose interpretation of these concepts are solely my own informed by the random readings I find scattered throughout the wasteland of the modern internet. I hope it initiates a curiosity in our readers to explore these concepts from their own world view and consider the importance of a public at least somewhat cognizant of how the nation was founded and why some of these laws and amendments were written in the manner they were at that time.

Thank you as always for your time and your thoughts.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

Thanks, V, for another thought provoking essay. A jury’s findings must have commonly been subject to re-examination, or the Founders wouldn’t have crafted an Amendment forbidding its practice.

Category: America, Guest Post, Legal, The Constitution