What’s so special about the right to a jury trial?

The Constitution’s guarantee of the right to a jury trial is more remarkable than we recognize. In fact, most of us give little to no thought to the institution of jury trials until we receive a jury duty summons in the mail. While a summons might invoke a fair amount of annoyance at having to step away from our jobs and spend an unspecified number of days at the local courthouse, that written notice is a manifestation of a centuries-long fight for limited government that extends far beyond local courthouses.

Indeed, this constitutional right is so vital to individual liberty, John Adams once said that “representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hogs.”

It’s no wonder, then, that the Framers were so careful to include jury trials in the Bill of Rights via the Sixth Amendment, which deals with criminal trials, and the Seventh Amendment, which deals with civil trials, to protect the rule of law and ensure that governments would never have the absolute power to determine if a person has broken the law. This was a revolutionary concept, no doubt, but the roots of jury trials began long before the American Revolution.

The origins of jury trials can be traced back hundreds of years to the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Saxons, and Germanic tribes. As far as our United States Constitution is concerned, it’s best to start our story in Medieval England.

The barons v. the tyrant king

The year 1215 was fraught with conflict between the English land barons and King John. Since taking the throne in 1199, the King had proven himself to be quite the tyrant, committing routine abuses against the barons. So infamous were his trespasses, he would later be portrayed as the main protagonist in the story of Robin Hood.

As the conflict came to a head, the barons requested the King’s presence at Runnymede, a field in Southeast England. When he arrived, he was surrounded and more or less forced at sword point to affix his seal to Magna Carta—a charter of liberties that guaranteed the basic rights of land barons. Among these liberties were property rights, the rule of law, and the right to a jury trial.

For far too long, the barons had been subjected to the King’s arbitrary rule, where legal disputes were settled by the King’s judges and not by the barons’ peers.

To place a check on the King’s powers, the 39th chapter of Magna Carta stated that the Crown is sworn to never punish a free man unless he has first stood in front of “the lawful judgment of his peers.” The signing of Magna Carta marked the first time that the rule of law was captured in a written document as a means of limiting the government in the spirit of what Thomas Jefferson would later poetically describe as binding politicians “down by the chains of the Constitution” or in this case, the “Great Charter.”

But the barons’ triumph was not the “happily ever after” they had hoped for. At this time, the Catholic Church had a great deal of power in England, and shortly after the Magna Carta was signed, King John asked the Pope to nullify it, which he did. Of course, this nullification would hold power only if the land barons acknowledged it, which they did not. More chaos ensued, ultimately resulting in the barons surrendering to the Crown.

This tug-of-war between absolute despotism and limited government would drag on for years to come.

The Court of Star Chamber

From the late-15th century to the mid-17th century, the British Crown used what was called the Court of Star Chamber to suppress the right to trial by jury. In Star Chamber, which got its name because of the stars painted in the chamber where the court met, the legal proceedings were held in secret. There were no indictments, no witnesses, no appeals, and no juries.

Star Chamber arose out of concerns that justice would be impeded in cases where society’s more powerful members stood trial. It was argued that if jury members held any resentment toward the defendant, it might cloud their judgment. In reality, Star Chamber was used as a political tool to deprive those on trial of their basic individual rights and allow the King to punish anyone he chose.

In the 1640s, when the English Civil War broke out between Parliament and the Crown, the latter was subsequently overthrown and Oliver Cromwell, a war hero, replaced the King as the “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” Cromwell promptly put an end to Star Chamber. But as history has taught us, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and under Cromwell, the monarchy’s long-standing infringement on jury trials continued.

This was a tumultuous time for England, with a constant power struggle between Parliament and the Crown. After Cromwell died, Charles II rose to power and continued to strip away rights from the people. Charles II had no male heir, and when he died, his brother James II took the throne. This posed a major issue as James II was a Catholic. As Protestants, Parliament feared what would happen to England with a Catholic monarch in charge. James’ reign would undo the years that were spent getting England out from under the thumb of the Roman Catholic Church.

Resolved to stop King James II, the Protestants launched the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

The Protestant Englishmen defeated King James with the help of the King’s own son-in-law, William. After the victory, Parliament let William take the throne on the condition that he must co-rule with his wife, James’ daughter, Mary. The pair would also be required to sign the British Bill of Rights, which, among other important liberties, secured the right to trial by jury.

The right to a jury trial was now a fundamental feature of British civil liberties. Renowned English jurist and justice Sir William Blackstone would later write that “The trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of English law.”

Across the pond, Sir Blackstone was one of the most, if not the most, respected legal minds among the American colonists. In fact, Sir Blackstone’s four volumes on the Commentaries on the Laws of England were so highly regarded by our Founders and Framers that their influence can be seen all throughout our Constitution.

In the New World

Understanding the dangers of unchecked power, the first American Colonists were careful to protect their rights as Englishmen in the New World. In 1606, the right to a jury trial was guaranteed to colonists by King James I in the First Charter of Virginia. So important was this right that it would be included in all subsequent colonial charters. But it would not be long until jury trial in the colonies came under siege.

The decades leading up to the Revolutionary War were contentious. In 1733, Governor William Cosby, the British colonial governor of New York, took legal action against the printer and journalist John Peter Zenger. Zenger’s paper had printed articles and satirical materials criticizing the governor, with the latter accusing him of seditious libel.

Cosby became irate after two grand juries refused to indict Zenger. Cosby then used a tactic called “information” to have Zenger tried in front of the New York Supreme Court, which he controlled. Much to Cosby’s dismay, the jury found Zenger “not guilty.” As the colonial rebellion escalated, agents of the Crown began to strip the colonists of their right to a jury trial to avoid a repeat of Zenger.

The ever-increasing attack on jury trials became a main issue in the cause for revolution. The South Carolina General Assembly even made it clear in 1751 that “any person who shall endeavor to deprive us of so glorious a privilege of trial by jury” was an enemy of the colonies.

The British attack on jury trials continued with the 1765 Stamp Act, which punished violators by trying them in admiral courts without juries. In 1774, the Intolerable Acts further limited the use of colonial juries, restricted who was allowed to serve as a jurist, and gave royal judges the power over jury selection.

In 1776, the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, citing the numerous royal offenses that made separation between the colonists and the Crown inevitable. In their list of grievances against King George, the Declaration’s authors called out the Crown for “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”

When the war was won and the Constitution ratified, the Framers safeguarded the right to trial by jury in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments.

The threat continues

Despite the centuries of historical lessons that inspired the adoption of the Seventh Amendment, the right to a jury trial is still under threat by the federal government.

Today, individuals who find themselves in the crosshairs of one of the administrative state’s many regulatory agencies, like the EPA and the SEC, may be subject to agency adjudication. These in-house tribunals exist outside of the constitutional judicial system and deprive individuals of their right to a jury trial. Instead, the federal agency in question assumes the role of judge, jury, and appellate court, abolishing any semblance of due process. In many ways, agency adjudication is the ghost of Star Chamber.

As Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Adi Dyner perfectly puts it, “The right to a jury trial does not vanish simply because you are dealing with a federal agency. In fact, that’s where juries are most needed because, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says, juries keep both prosecutors and judges in check and protect we, the people, from government abuse of power.” When the right to a jury trial, and thus, due process, is ignored, individuals are at the whim of government. PLF is committed to ending agency adjudication and honoring the wisdom of our Founders, who knew how integral jury trials are to securing individual liberty.