The Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Cases Part 2: Identifying Civil Cases with a Right to a Jury Trial

The Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Cases Part 2: Identifying Civil Cases with a Right to a Jury Trial

Legal Sidebari

The Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Cases Part 2:
Identifying Civil Cases with a Right to a Jury
Trial
December 22, 2022
This Legal Sidebar is the second in a five-part series that discusses a unique feature of the American legal
system—the constitutional right to a jury trial in federal civil cases at law. During the Constitution’s
ratification, the Anti-Federalist, known by the pseudonym the “Federal Farmer,” argued that the
Constitution should expressly provide a right to civil jury trials because “the well born,” who would
comprise the judiciary, “are generally disposed, and very naturally too, to favour those of their own
description.” Included as part of the Bill of Rights, the right to civil jury trials, according to a 2020 study,
is seen by many judges as well as plaintiff and defense attorneys as providing a fairer way to resolve
lawsuits than bench trials or arbitration. The use of jury trials to resolve civil cases, however, decreased
from 5.5% in 1962 to less than 1% in 2013 with some attributing this to damage caps and mandatory
binding arbitration. Members of Congress interested in civil litigation or federal court operations may find
the constitutional right to jury trials in civil cases of interest. (For additional background on this topic and
citations to relevant sources, see the Constitution of the United States of America, Analysis and
Interpretation.)
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.” 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.
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.” 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
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remedies of the sort traditionally enforced in an action at law, rather than in an action at equity or
admiralty.” 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.
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.”
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 Seventh Amendment’s meaning, or that the issues
raised were not particularly legal in nature. 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.
The Seventh Amendment does not apply to cases in admiralty and maritime jurisdiction in which the
court conducts a trial without a jury, 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. 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. 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.
On the other hand, if Congress assigns such cases to Article III courts, a jury may be required. In Tull v.
United States, 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. Consequently, it is a type of remedy that only courts
of law could impose. 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.’” In Granfinanciera, S.A. v.
Nordberg, 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. 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.

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This Legal Sidebar is the second in a five-part series that covers the right to a jury trial in civil cases at
law. Part 1 provides a historical background on the right to a jury trial in civil cases at law. Parts 3 and 4
examine the distinction between legal and equitable claims, the treatment of cases that combine elements
of both, and the roles of the judge and jury in civil cases. Part 5 concludes with a discussion of the bar on
judges from reexamining a jury’s factual findings.

Author Information

Wen W. Shen

Legislative Attorney

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