In the U.S. Constitution’s first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, some amendments resound more loudly than others in the public’s attention. We hear a lot about the First and Second amendments, respectively addressing free speech and firearm ownership. The Fifth and Eighth amendments, dealing in turn with the rights against self-incrimination (amongst several other important things) and proportionate punishment, also loom large in the collective consciousness. The Fourth and Sixth amendments craft the very fabric of our criminal justice system, though discussion about them appears more limited to legal practitioners rather than the lay public.
By contrast, think about all you know and have heard about the Third and Ninth amendments. The Ninth Amendment deals purely with how the U.S. Constitution should be construed, so it is another amendment which has more bearing on specific communities, namely jurists and maybe those involved in legislative draftsmanship. The Third Amendment, against the quartering of troops in private homes, is mostly a relic from our colonial past, though it has some bearing on modern police practices, and in rare cases you will hear it implicated as when police commandeer a hotel for a stake-out.
Similarly, the Tenth Amendment receives short shrift in the collective consciousness, except maybe if you are Libertarian and are well aware of its scope from the noble work of Michael Boldin’s Tenth Amendment Center. That work merits an article all its own, but there is one more Amendment which falls through the cracks of the public’s attention, though it exerts considerable influence on our society.
The amendment in question is the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which in full provides:
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
As you can tell, this is another amendment addressed mostly to the legal community, yet it forms the basis for civil jury trials in the federal judiciary. Without the Seventh Amendment, lawsuits concerning federal law or involving litigants from different states, would be heard only by professional judges, figuratively cloistered from the populace by lifetime appointment. By way of this amendment, civil litigants can have their case heard by a jury of their peers, which in theory subjects such controversies to the national conscience.
Going a level deeper, the Seventh Amendment mentions common law, which distinguishes its protection from cases involving equity. Equity in the jurisprudential sense means relief granted by the court which involves no money, such as injunctions or orders for specific performance. Thus, if a federal court is asked to enjoin some litigant’s activity, a judge at equity can make that determination, but if anyone is to pay damages to another, the Seventh Amendment entitles the parties to have a lay jury hear that case or portion thereof.
And on the subject of money, the Seventh Amendment’s threshold of twenty dollars for a federal controversy is an instructive relic! At present, no case will be heard in federal district courts for anything less than $75,000. You couldn’t even get a lawyer to spit on you for $20… unless he’s into that stuff. Of course, part of the reason the current threshold is so much higher is that our population is exponentially larger than it had been when the Bill of Rights was drafted. If every man-jack with twenty bucks could have his case heard in federal court, then the docket would be clogged for years with small potatoes. Proportionately to the time of the USA’s founding, there are also many more federal statutes which affect civil litigants, so a higher buy-in winnows the caseload.
That said, the Seventh Amendment’s Value in Controversy clause demonstrates how alarmingly our currency’s worth has diminished since the time of the Bill of Rights’ promulgation. In 1792 the United States Congress passed the Coinage Act which defined a dollar according to a bimetallic standard of 15 grains of pure silver to one grain of pure gold (Paul & Lehrman, The Case for Gold, 2007, p. 31). Congress could and would later vary that ratio depending on market conditions, but at least the currency had some value since it was tied to physical elements of certain scarcity. Since the Gold Window’s closure in 1971, we have long abandoned tying the dollar to any fixed value, such that officially a fiat dollar is defined as that which a dollar buys, and every year that is less.
Nevertheless, should someone wrong us in a case sounding in federal law, the Bill of Rights’ unsung hero, the Seventh Amendment, gets us our day in court, before a jury of our peers. Whether the money we win in judgment is still worth anything is an entirely different matter.
I appreciate this review and education!