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1 1 (December 22, 2022)

handle is hein.crs/govejyc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: a% Congressional_______ A Research Serviceg The Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Cases Part 3: Legal and Equitable Claims and Combined Cases Updated December 22, 2022 This Legal Sidebar is the third 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 ofAmerica, Analysis and Interpretation.) 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 suits in both law and equity, but legal and equitable claims had to be filed as separate causes of action on different sides of a federal court's civil docket. Each side of the court was subject to distinct law and equity procedures, including the use or nonuse of the jury. Under the old equity rules, an absolute right to a trial of the facts by a jury could not be impaired by any blending with a claim seeking equitable relief in aid of the legal action or during its pendency. However, the Supreme Court interpreted the Seventh Amendment to prohibit the trial of equitable and legal issues in the same suit, so that equitable relief had to be sought in separate proceedings. If an action at law evoked an equitable counterclaim, the trial judge would order the legal issues to be separately tried after Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10885 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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