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Research Servic
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
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports.congress.gov
LSB10884
CRS Legal Sidebar
Prepared for Members and
Committees of Congress](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govejwy0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)