The Seventh Amendment (Amendment VII) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. This amendment enumerates the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact.
An early version of the Seventh Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison, along with the other amendments, in response to Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution. Congress proposed a revised version of the Seventh Amendment to the states on September 28, 1789, and by December 15, 1791, the necessary three-quarters of the states had ratified it.
The Seventh Amendment is generally considered one of the more straightforward amendments of the Bill of Rights. While the Seventh Amendment's provision for jury trials in civil cases has never been incorporated (applied to the states), almost every state has a provision for jury trials in civil cases in its constitution. The prohibition of overturning a jury's findings of fact applies to federal cases, state cases involving federal law, and to review of state cases by federal courts. United States v. Wonson (1812) established the historical test, which interpreted the amendment as relying on English common law to determine whether a jury trial was necessary in a civil suit. The amendment thus does not guarantee trial by jury in cases under maritime law, in lawsuits against the government itself, and for many parts of patent claims. In all other cases, the jury can be waived by consent of the parties.
The amendment additionally guarantees a minimum of six members for a jury in a civil trial. The amendment's twenty-dollar threshold has not been the subject of much scholarly or judicial writing and still remains applicable despite the inflation that has occurred since the late 18th century ($20 in 1791 is ; $20 in 1800 was convertible to a Troy ounce of gold).
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Background
After several years of comparatively weak government under the Articles of Confederation, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new constitution on September 17, 1787, featuring a stronger chief executive and other changes.Wood, pp. 14–16 George Mason, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the drafter of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, proposed that a bill of rights listing and guaranteeing civil liberties be included. Other delegates—including future Bill of Rights drafter James Madison—disagreed, arguing that existing state guarantees of civil liberties were sufficient and any attempt to enumerate individual rights risked implying the federal government had power to violate every other right (this concern eventually led to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). After a brief debate, Mason's proposal was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations.Beeman, pp. 341–43 In the final days of the convention, North Carolina delegate Hugh Williamson proposed a guarantee of trial by jury in federal civil cases, but a motion to add this guarantee was also defeated.
However, adoption of the Constitution required that nine of the thirteen states ratify it in state conventions. Opposition to ratification ("Anti-Federalism") was partly based on the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. Supporters of the Constitution in states where popular sentiment was against ratification (including Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York) successfully proposed that their state conventions both ratify the Constitution and call for the addition of a bill of rights.Maier, p. 431
One charge of the Anti-Federalists was that giving the U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction "both as to law and fact" would allow it to deny the findings of jury trials in civil cases. Responding to these concerns, five state ratification conventions recommended a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to jury trial in civil cases.
Proposal and ratification
In the 1st United States Congress, following the state legislatures' request, James Madison proposed twenty constitutional amendments based on state bills of rights and English sources such as the Bill of Rights 1689.Labunski, p. 192 Among them was an amendment protecting findings of fact in civil cases exceeding a certain dollar value from judicial review. Madison proposed that this amendment should be added directly to Article III, though Congress later determined to add the proposed Bill of Rights to the end of the Constitution, leaving the original text intact. Congress also reduced Madison's proposed twenty amendments to twelve, and these were proposed to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789.Wood, p. 69
By the time the Bill of Rights was submitted to the states for ratification, opinions had shifted in both parties. Many Federalists, who had previously opposed a Bill of Rights, now supported the Bill as a means of silencing the Anti-Federalists' most effective criticism. Many Anti-Federalists, in contrast, now opposed it, realizing the Bill's adoption would greatly lessen the chances of a second constitutional convention, which they desired.Wood, p. 71 Anti-Federalists such as Richard Henry Lee also argued that the Bill left the most objectionable portions of the Constitution, such as the federal judiciary and direct taxation, intact.
On November 20, 1788, New Jersey ratified eleven of the twelve amendments, rejecting an amendment to regulate congressional pay raises. On December 19 and 22, respectively, Maryland and North Carolina ratified all twelve amendments.Labunski, p. 245 On January 19, 25, and 28, 1790, respectively, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Delaware ratified the Bill, though New Hampshire rejected the amendment on Congressional pay raises, and Delaware rejected the Congressional Apportionment Amendment. This brought the total of ratifying states to six of the required ten, but the process stalled in other states: Connecticut and Georgia found a Bill of Rights unnecessary and so refused to ratify, while Massachusetts ratified most of the amendments, but failed to send official notice to the Secretary of State that it had done so.
In February through June 1790, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island ratified eleven of the amendments, though all three rejected the amendment on Congressional pay raises. Virginia initially postponed its debate, but after Vermont was admitted to the Union in 1791, the total number of states needed for ratification rose to eleven. Vermont ratified on November 3, 1791, approving all twelve amendments, and Virginia finally followed on December 15, 1791. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson announced the adoption of the ten successfully ratified amendments on March 1, 1792.Labunski, p. 255
Judicial interpretation The Seventh Amendment encompasses two clauses. 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") sets out the types of cases juries are required to decide, while the Re-examination Clause ("[N]o fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law") prevents federal judges from overturning jury verdicts in certain ways. The Legal Information Institute stated with respect to the Preservation Clause: "Sir William Blackstone, in his influential treatise on English common law, called the right 'the glory of the English law' and necessary for '[t]he impartial administration of justice', which, if 'entirely entrusted to the magistracy, a select body of men', would be subject 'frequently [to] an involuntary bias towards those of their own rank and dignity'." The amendment is generally considered one of the more straightforward amendments of the Bill of Rights. Scholar Charles W. Wolfram states that it has usually "been interpreted as if it were virtually a self-explanatory provision".Wolfram, p. 639 According to the National Constitution Center, both times the term "common law" is used in the Seventh Amendment refers to "the law and procedure of the courts that used juries, as opposed to Equity and other courts that did not use juries".
Unlike most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, the Seventh Amendment has never been applied to the states. The Supreme Court stated in Walker v. Sauvinet (1875), Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad v. Bombolis (1916) and Hardware Dealers' Mut. Fire Ins. Co. of Wisconsin v. Glidden Co. (1931) that states were not required to provide jury trials in civil cases. Nonetheless, most states voluntarily guarantee the right to a civil jury trial, See generally West Virginia Constitution, art. III (using a threshold amount of twenty dollars as in the U.S. Constitution). and they must do so in certain state court cases that are decided under federal law.Dice v. Akron, C. & Y. R.R., 342 U.S. 359 (1952).
Historical test
The first judicial opinion issued on the amendment came in United States v. Wonson (1812), in which the federal government wished to retry the facts of a civil case it had lost against Samuel Wonson.Wolfram, p. 640 Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, acting as a circuit court judge, ruled for Wonson, stating that to retry the facts of the case would violate the Seventh Amendment. Regarding the amendment's phrase "the rules of common law", Story wrote:
Wonson'''s ruling established the historical test, which interpreted the amendment as relying on English common law to determine whether a jury trial was necessary in a civil suit. Applying the historical test in Parsons v. Bedford (1830), for example, the Supreme Court found that jury trials were not constitutionally guaranteed for cases under maritime law, an area in which English common law did not require juries. The Court further clarified this rule as a fixed historical test in Thompson v. Utah (1898), which established that the relevant guide was English common law of 1791, rather than that of the present day. In Dimick v. Schiedt (1935), the Supreme Court declared that the Seventh Amendment was to be interpreted according to the common law of England at the time of the amendment's adoption in 1791. The Supreme Court in Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman (1935) declared that the right of trial by jury thus preserved by the Preservation Clause is the right which existed under the English common law when the amendment was adopted. "The amendment not only preserves that right, but discloses a studied purpose to protect it from indirect impairment through possible enlargements of the power of reexamination existing under the common law, and, to that end, declares that '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'." In Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman (1935), the Supreme Court held that the amendment does not include "mere matters of form or procedure", but instead preserves the "substance" of the right to jury trial. The aim of the amendment is particularly to retain the common law distinction between the province of the court and that of the jury whereby, in the absence of express or implied consent to the contrary, issues of law are to be resolved by the court and issues of fact are to be determined by the jury under appropriate instructions by the court. In Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry (1990), the Court explained that the right to a jury trial provided by the Seventh Amendment encompasses more than the common law forms of action recognized in 1791 (when the Bill of Rights was ratified), but rather any lawsuit in which parties' legal rights were to be determined, as opposed to suits that involve only equitable rights and remedies.Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558 (1990) This echoes a statement for the Supreme Court in Curtis v. Leother, 415 U.S. 189 (1974) where it stated: