Civil Court Procedures, Doctrinal Issues In

Right to Trial by Jury

The right to trial by jury was a feature of the procedural system of England in America's colonial period, and that right was adopted by the colonial court systems. The right extended to civil cases at common law as well as to criminal cases. People regarded the right as so important that it was written into the U.S. Constitution. The Sixth Amendment guaranteed the right to jury trial in criminal cases, and the Seventh Amendment extended it to civil cases at common law where more than $20 is in dispute. The right to a jury in civil cases was a feature of common law procedure but not of the procedure of the Chancery (equity) courts. The right guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment, then, applies only to cases that jurists would have considered suits at common law in 1791 (the year the amendment was ratified), not to cases that would have been suits in Chancery.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared the SixthAmendment right to jury trial in criminal cases an element of due process of law, guaranteed against state infringement by the Fourteenth Amendment (Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 1968). The SeventhAmendment right to jury trial in civil cases, however, has not been regarded as so fundamental, and so each state remains free to recognize the right or not in its own courts. However, most, if not all states, have guaranteed the right in their own state constitutions. Interpretations of the scope and details of that right can and do vary considerably among the states. There can be differences in the required number of jurors, the manner of jury selection, the number of jurors required to produce a verdict, and so on.

Ironically, in England, from whence America inherited the right, jury trials have all but disappeared in civil cases, and even in America, jury trial in civil cases has been a subject of controversy. Some have advocated its complete abandonment, arguing that a lay jury cannot be a rational fact finder. Lawyers can manipulate the jury by histrionic advocacy, leading to verdicts based on emotion rather than the rational evaluation of evidence. Others, however, defend the system as an appropriate as well as historic feature of American civil procedure. Since it is constitutional in origin, attempts to abolish trial by jury in civil cases have not succeeded. Instead of attacking the institution itself, opponents of the right to jury trial have been more successful in changing the law in some areas where the civil jury's shortcomings seem most pronounced. Attempts to abolish or limit the availability of punitive damages have had considerable success, as have attempts to place arbitrary limits on the amount of damages a successful plaintiff can recover.

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