The Seventh Amendment

The Text

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 re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

What It Says

In civil lawsuits above a minimal amount you have a right to a jury, and once a jury has decided a question of fact no federal court may simply re-decide it.

What It Protects Against

Judge-only courts deciding disputes between citizens and the state. British vice-admiralty courts tried customs and revenue cases without juries precisely because local juries refused to convict, which made the judge the entire proceeding.

Sourced to a ratification-era document. See Contemporaneous Defense below.

Problem Addressed

Vice-admiralty courts operating in the colonies heard revenue and customs cases without juries, removing the one check a community had over enforcement of unpopular trade laws.

Contemporaneous Defense

Federalist No. 83 addressed the absence of a civil jury guarantee in the original Constitution and the Anti-Federalist objection to it directly; the objection was strong enough across the ratifying conventions that the guarantee was written into the Bill of Rights.