Seventh Amendment — Civil Trial Rights

Amdt7.1 Overview of Seventh Amendment, Civil Trial Rights

The Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial in civil cases at law in federal court and limits the circumstances under which courts may overturn a jury’s findings of fact.¹ Although this right is rooted in English common law and was important during the colonial era, it was initially omitted from the Constitution. The First Congress, however, ultimately adopted the right as one of the Bill of Rights, which became effective in 1791.² Since then, the Supreme Court has interpreted the phrase “Suits at common law” under the Amendment as preserving the right of trial by jury in civil cases as it “existed under the English common law when the amendment was adopted.”³ This means that the Amendment does not guarantee trial by jury in cases under admiralty and maritime law and in other proceedings historically tried by a court instead of a jury, nor does it reach statutory proceedings unknown to the common law concerning the enforcement of statutory “public rights” created by Congress.⁴

The following essays in this section address in more detail the historical background of the right to jury trials in civil cases and the types of civil cases and claims requiring a jury trial. In addition, the essays also address other aspects of this right, including the circumstances under which courts may make gatekeeping juridical determinations that prevent submission of claims to a jury, the composition and functions of a jury in civil cases, and the circumstances under which courts may order the entry of a judgment contrary to a jury’s verdict.⁵

Amdt7.2.1 Historical Background of Jury Trials in Civil Cases

The Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial in civil cases at law in federal court.¹ The Amendment traces its roots to English common law; some historians trace the origin of the English jury as far back as Ancient Greece.² 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.”³

From England, the colonists brought the right to a jury trial across the Atlantic. The civil jury played an important role during the colonial era.⁴ The colonies stoutly resisted the King of England’s efforts to diminish this right, and the Declaration of Independence identified the denial of “the benefits of trial by jury” as one of the grievances that led to the American Revolution.⁵ Despite this right’s prominence in Colonial America, however, a right to a civil jury trial was not included in the original draft of the Constitution.⁶

Records of the Philadelphia Convention show that the delegates twice raised the issue of whether the Constitution should include a right to a jury trial. On September 12, 1787, toward the end of the Convention, Hugh Williamson of North Carolina “observed to the House that no provision was yet made for juries in Civil cases and suggested the necessity of it.”⁷ Some delegates expressed support for such a provision but observed that the diversity of state courts’ practices in civil trials made it impossible to draft a suitable provision.⁸ This latter concern appears to have served as the basis for defeating a motion, brought by another delegate on September 15, 1787, to insert a clause in Article III, § 2, to guarantee that “a trial by jury shall be preserved as usual in civil cases.”⁹

After the Convention, many opponents of the Constitution’s ratification cited the omission of a right to a jury trial with such “urgency and zeal” that they almost prevented the states from ratifying the Constitution.¹⁰ Some opponents of the Constitution claimed that the absence of a provision requiring civil jury trials in a Constitution that mandated jury trials in criminal cases¹¹ implied that the use of a jury was abolished in civil cases.¹² In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton refuted this assertion, expressing the view that the Constitution’s silence on civil jury trials merely meant “that the institution [would] remain precisely in the same situation in which it is placed by the State constitutions.”¹³

In ratifying the Constitution, several states urged Congress to provide a right to a jury in civil cases as one of the amendments.¹⁴ The right was included in the list of amendments James Madison proposed to the First Congress, which adopted the right as one of the Bill of Rights.¹⁵ It does not appear that the proposed amendment’s text or meaning was debated during its passage.¹⁶ The Seventh Amendment became effective as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Amdt7.2.2 Identifying Civil Cases Requiring a Jury Trial

The Seventh Amendment grants a right to a jury trial in “Suits at common law,” which the Supreme Court has long interpreted as “limited to rights and remedies peculiarly legal in their nature, and such as it was proper to assert in courts of law and by the appropriate modes and proceedings of courts of law.”¹ The drafters of the Seventh Amendment used the term “common law” to clarify that the Amendment does not provide a right to a jury in civil suits involving the types of equitable rights and remedies that courts enforced at the time of the Amendment’s framing.²

Two unanimous decisions, in which the Supreme Court held that civil juries were required, illustrate the Court’s treatment of this distinction. In the first suit, a landlord sought to recover, based on District of Columbia statutes, possession of real property from a tenant allegedly behind on rent. The Court reasoned that whether “a close equivalent to [the statute in question] existed in England in 1791 [was] irrelevant for Seventh Amendment purposes.”³ Instead, the Court stated that its Seventh Amendment precedents “require[d] trial by jury in actions unheard of at common law, provided that the action involves rights and remedies of the sort traditionally enforced in an action at law, rather than in an action at equity or admiralty.”⁴ The statutory cause of action, the Court found, had several analogs in the common law, all of which involved a right to trial by jury.⁵

In a second case, the plaintiff sought damages for alleged racial discrimination in the rental of housing in violation of federal law, arguing that the Seventh Amendment was inapplicable to new causes of action Congress created. The Court disagreed: “The Seventh Amendment does apply to actions enforcing statutory rights, and requires a jury trial upon demand, if the statute creates legal rights and remedies, enforceable in an action for damages in the ordinary courts of law.”⁶

In contrast, the Court has upheld the lack of a jury provision in certain actions on the ground that the suit in question was not a suit at common law within the meaning of the Amendment, or that the issues raised were not particularly legal in nature.⁷ When there is no direct historical antecedent dating to the Amendment’s adoption, the court may also consider whether existing precedent and the sound administration of justice favor resolution by judges or juries.⁸

The Seventh Amendment does not apply to cases in admiralty and maritime jurisdiction in which the court conducts a trial without a jury.⁹ Nor does it reach statutory proceedings unknown to the common law, such as an application to a court of equity to enforce an administrative body’s order.¹⁰ For example, Congress, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, authorized an administrative agency to make findings of a workplace safety violation and to assess civil penalties related to such a violation. Under the statute, an employer that has been assessed a penalty may obtain judicial review of the administrative proceeding in a federal court of appeal.¹¹ The Supreme Court, in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission, unanimously rejected the argument that the law violated the Seventh Amendment because it authorized penalties to be collected from an employer without a jury trial:

At least in cases in which “public rights” are being litigated—e.g., cases in which the

government sues in its sovereign capacity to enforce public rights created by statutes

within the power of Congress to enact—the Seventh Amendment does not prohibit

Congress from assigning the factfinding function and initial adjudication to an

administrative forum with which the jury would be incompatible.¹²

On the other hand, if Congress assigns such cases to Article III courts, a jury may be required. In Tull v. United States,¹³ the Court ruled that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury to determine whether an entity is liable for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act, which authorizes the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to initiate a civil action in a federal district court to enforce the Act. In the Court’s view, the penal nature of the Clean Water Act’s civil penalty remedy distinguishes it from restitution-based remedies available in equity courts.¹⁴ Consequently, it is a type of remedy that only courts of law could impose.¹⁵ However, a jury trial is not required to assess the amount of the penalty. Because the Court viewed assessment of the amount of penalty as involving neither the “substance” nor a “fundamental element” of a common-law right to trial by jury, it held permissible the Act’s assignment of that task to the trial judge.

Later, the Court relied on a broadened concept of “public rights” to define the limits of congressional power to assign causes of action to tribunals in which jury trials are unavailable. As a general matter, “public rights” involve “‘the relationship between the government and persons subject to its authority,’” whereas “private rights” relate to “‘the liability of one individual to another.’”¹⁶ In Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg,¹⁷ the Court held that Congress “lacks the power to strip parties contesting matters of private right of their constitutional right to a trial by jury.” The Seventh Amendment test, the Court indicated, is the same as the Article III test for whether Congress may assign adjudication of a claim to a non-Article III tribunal.¹⁸ Although finding room for “some debate,” the Court determined that a bankruptcy trustee’s right to recover for a fraudulent conveyance “is more accurately characterized as a private rather than a public right,” at least when the defendant had not submitted a claim against the bankruptcy estate.¹⁹

Amdt7.2.3 Cases Combining Law and Equity

The Seventh Amendment uses the term “common law” to refer to cases in which the right to jury trial was preserved. This term’s use reflected the division of the English and United States legal systems into separate law and equity jurisdictions, in which actions subject to the former but not the latter were triable to a jury. In the early federal court system, courts had jurisdiction over both suits in law and equity, but the suits occupied separate sides of a federal court’s civil docket and were subject to distinct law and equity procedures, including the use or nonuse of the jury.¹

Adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938 merged law and equity into a single civil jurisdiction and established uniform rules of procedure.² Legal and equitable claims that previously were brought as separate causes of action on different “sides” of the court could now be joined in a single action, and in some cases, such as those with compulsory counterclaims, had to be joined in one action.³ However, the courts retained the traditional distinction between law and equity for purposes of determining when there was a constitutional right to trial by jury, which led to some difficulty.⁴

The Supreme Court resolved the difficulty by stressing the fundamental nature of the jury trial right and protecting it against diminution through resort to equitable principles. In Beacon Theatres v. Westover, a plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment and an injunction barring the defendant from instituting an antitrust action against it; the defendant filed a counterclaim alleging violation of the antitrust laws and asking for treble damages.⁵ The Supreme Court held that the district court erred in denying the defendant a jury trial on all issues in the antitrust controversy because the complaint for declaratory relief “presented basically equitable issues.”⁶ The trial court’s error, in the Court’s view, would compel the defendant to split its antitrust case in two, trying part to a judge and part to a jury, impermissibly delaying and subordinating its counterclaim that it was required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to bring within the same action.⁷ Long-standing equity principles, according to the Court, dictated that “only under the most imperative circumstances which in view of the flexible procedures of the Federal Rules we cannot now anticipate, can the right to a jury trial of legal issues be lost through prior determination of equitable claims.”⁸

Later, in Dairy Queen v.Wood, the Supreme Court reversed a district court’s order striking a plaintiff ’s demand for jury trial.⁹ There, the plaintiff-trademark owner sought several types of relief against the defendant-licensee for the licensee’s alleged breach of a licensing contract, including an injunction and an accounting for money damages.¹⁰ The Court held that, even though the claim for legal relief was characterized by the district court as “incidental” to the equitable relief sought, the Seventh Amendment required that the factual issues pertaining to whether there had been a breach of contract to be tried before a jury.¹¹ Thus, the rule emerged that legal claims must be tried before equitable ones, and before a jury if the litigant so wished.¹²

In Ross v. Bernhard, the Court further held that the right to a jury trial depends on the nature of the issue to be tried, rather than the procedural framework in which it is raised.¹³ The case involved a stockholder derivative action, which had always been considered to be a suit in equity.¹⁴ The Court agreed that the action was equitable, but concluded that it involved two separable claims. The first, the stockholder’s standing to sue for a corporation, was an equitable issue; the second, the corporation’s claim asserted by the stockholder, may be either equitable or legal.¹⁵ Because the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure merged law and equity in the federal courts, there was no longer any procedural obstacle to transferring jurisdiction to the law side once the equitable issue of standing was decided. Thus, the Court continued, if the corporation’s claim that the stockholder asserted was legal in nature, it should be heard on the law side and before a jury.¹⁶

Amdt7.2.4 Restrictions on the Role of the Judge

One of the primary purposes of the Seventh Amendment was to preserve the historic line separating the province of the jury from that of the judge, without preventing procedural innovations that respect this boundary. In defining this line, the Supreme Court has concluded that it is constitutional for a federal judge, in the course of trial, to: (1) express his opinion upon the facts, provided that all questions of fact are ultimately submitted to the jury;¹ (2) call the jury’s attention to parts of the evidence that he or she deems of special importance,² being careful to distinguish between matters of law and matters of opinion;³ (3) inform the jury, when there is insufficient evidence to justify a verdict;⁴ (4) require a jury to answer specific interrogatories in addition to rendering a general verdict;⁵ (5) direct the jury, after the plaintiff ’s case is complete, to return a verdict for the defendant on the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence;⁶ (6) set aside a verdict that is against the law or the evidence and order a new trial;⁷ and (7) refuse the defendant a new trial on the condition, accepted by plaintiff, that the plaintiff remit a portion of the damages awarded him.⁸

In International Terminal Operating Co. v. N.V. Nederl. Amerik Stoomv. Maats., however, the Supreme Court held that an appellate court erred in reversing a jury’s finding on the issue of the reasonableness of a stevedoring company’s conduct in failing to avert an injury to one of its employees.⁹ The Court of Appeals found that the stevedore acted unreasonably as a matter of law, but the Supreme Court held that, “[u]nder the Seventh Amendment, that issue should have been left to the jury’s determination.”¹⁰

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has noted: “In numerous contexts, gatekeeping judicial determinations prevent submission of claims to a jury’s judgment without violating the Seventh Amendment.”¹¹ For example, in order to screen out frivolous complaints or defenses, Congress “has power to prescribe what must be pleaded to state the claim, just as it has the power to determine what must be proved to prevail on the merits.”¹² It is, the Supreme Court observed, “the federal lawmaker’s prerogative . . . to allow, disallow, or shape the contours of-including the pleading and proof requirements for-[ ] private actions.”¹³

Amdt7.2.5 Composition and Functions of a Jury in Civil Cases

Traditionally, the Supreme Court has treated the Seventh Amendment as preserving the right of trial by jury in civil cases as it “existed under the English common law when the amendment was adopted.”¹ This right included “a trial by a jury of twelve men, in the presence and under the superintendence of a judge empowered to instruct them on the law and to advise them on the facts and (except in acquittal of a criminal charge) to set aside their verdict if in his opinion it is against the law or the evidence.”² Decisions of the jury must be unanimous.³

In Colgrove v. Battin,⁴ however, the Court held by a 5-4 vote that rules adopted in a federal district court authorizing civil juries composed of six persons were permissible under the Seventh Amendment and federal statutory law. The Amendment’s reference to the “common law,” in the Court’s view, suggested “the Framers of the Seventh Amendment were concerned with preserving the right of trial by jury in civil cases where it existed at common law, rather than the various incidents of trial by jury.”⁵

As discussed, one of the Seventh Amendment’s primary purposes is to preserve “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 resolved by the court and issues of fact are to be determined by the jury under appropriate instructions by the court.”⁶ The Amendment, however, “does not require the retention of old forms of procedure”; nor does it “prohibit the introduction of new methods of ascertaining what facts are in issue” or new rules of evidence.⁷ According to the Court, matters that were tried by a jury in England in 1791 are to be so tried today.⁸ Conversely, matters that fall under equity and admiralty and maritime jurisprudence, which were tried by the judge in England in 1791, are to be so tried today. When new rights and remedies are created, “the right of action should be analogized to its historical counterpart, at law or in equity, for the purpose of determining whether there is a right of jury trial,” unless Congress has expressly prescribed the mode of trial.⁹

Amdt7.3.1 Review of Evidentiary Record

The Seventh Amendment’s Reexamination Clause prohibits reexamination in any federal court of a “fact tried by a jury” other “than according to the rules of the common law.”¹ In 1913, in Slocum v. New York Life Insurance Co.,² the Supreme Court held that a federal appeals court lacked authority to order the entry of a judgment contrary to a trial court’s verdict. Even though the Court agreed that the trial court should have directed a verdict for the defendant before the case was submitted to the jury, the Court reasoned that, once the trial court declined to do so and the jury found for the plaintiff contrary to the evidence, the only course open to either court was to order a new trial.³ Although plainly in accordance with the common law as it stood in 1791, the 5-4 decision was subjected to significant criticism.⁴ Slocum, however, was then limited, if not completely undermined, by subsequent holdings.⁵

In the first of these cases, the Court in Baltimore & Carolina Line v. Redman⁶ held that a trial court had the right to enter a judgment for the plaintiff on the verdict of the jury after having reserved decision on the defendant’s motion for directed verdict. The Court distinguished Slocum, noting its ruling qualified some of its assertions in Slocum.⁷

In Lyon v. Mutual Benefit Ass’n,⁸ the Court sustained a district court in rejecting the defendant’s motion for dismissal and in peremptorily directing a verdict for the plaintiff. The Supreme Court held that there was ample evidence to support the verdict and that the trial court, in following Arkansas’s procedure in the diversity action, acted consistently with the Federal Conformity Act.⁹

In Galloway v. United States,¹⁰ which involved an action against the government for benefits under a lapsed war risk insurance policy, the trial court directed a verdict for the government on the ground of insufficiency of evidence. Both the appeals court and the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s order.¹¹ Justice Hugo Black, joined by Justices William Douglas and Frank Murphy asserted in dissent: “Today’s decision marks a continuation of the gradual process of judicial erosion which in one-hundred-fifty years has slowly worn away a major portion of the essential guarantee of the Seventh Amendment.”¹² Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Court has occasionally experienced difficulty in harmonizing the historic common law covering the relations of judge and jury with the notion of a developing common law.¹³

Amdt7.3.2 Appeals from State Courts to the Supreme Court

The Seventh Amendment clause prohibiting re-examination of any fact found by a jury is not restricted in its application to suits at common law tried before juries in federal courts. It applies equally to cases tried before a jury in a state court and brought to the Supreme Court on appeal.¹ However, the Supreme Court has indicated that, in cases involving a claim of a denial of constitutional rights, it is free to examine and review the evidence upon which the lower court based its conclusions, a position that under some circumstances could conflict with the principle of jury autonomy.²