No Price Tag on Constitutional Rights
"We went to all that trouble with King John to get trial
by our peers, and now a lot of lawyers with the minds of business
consultants want to abolish juries. What must we do, I wonder. Go
back to Runnymede every so often to get another Magna Carta."
—Horace Rumpole [Famous fictional barrister created by author
John Mortimer] (1990)
America's founding leaders agreed that the right to trial by jury
is essential to a free and democratic society. The U.S. justice system
has stood the test of time. Learn the truth about your
rights before lobbyists and politicians take them away.
George Washington [1st President of the United States]
"There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who
had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates
for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury." (1788)
John Adams [2nd President of the United States]
"Representative government and trial by jury are the heart
and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no other fortification
against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like
cattle and fed and clothed like swine and hounds." (1774)
Thomas Jefferson [3rd President of the United States]
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined
by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its
constitution." (1788)
"Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which
has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution
and reformation." (1801)
"The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes has been
devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed
of our political faith." (1801)
James Madison [4th President of the United States]
"Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the
liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature."
(1789)
John Quincy Adams [5th President of the United States]
"The struggle for American independence was for chartered rights,
for English liberties, for trial by jury, habeas corpus and Magna
Carta." (1839)
Leaders and thinkers, from American patriot Patrick Henry to English
philosopher David Hume, also agree on the necessity of trial by jury
in any free society.
Patrick Henry of Virginia [Patriot who said "Give me
liberty or give me death!"]
"Trial by jury is the best appendage of freedom by which our
ancestors have secured their lives and property. I hope we shall
never be induced to part with that excellent mode of trial."
(1788)
Alexander Hamilton [Author of the Federalist papers
and delegate to the Constitutional Convention]
"The friends and adversaries of the plan of the convention,
if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they
set upon the trial by jury; the former regard it as a valuable safeguard
to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free
government." (1788)
Daniel Webster [American statesman and orator]
"The protection of life and property, habeas corpus, trial
by jury, the right of an open trial, these are principles of public
liberty existing in the best form in the republican institutions
of this country." (1848)
Judge Stephen Reinhardt [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals]
"Our constitutional right to trial by jury does not turn on
the political mood of the moment, the outcome of cost/benefit analyses
or the results of economic or fiscal calculations. There is no price
tag on the continued existence of the civil jury system, or any
other constitutionally-provided right." (1986)
David Hume [English philosopher and historian]
"Trial by jury is the best institution calculated for the preservation
of liberty and the administration of justice that was ever devised
by the wit of man." (1762)
Judge William Bryant1 [First
African-American federal district court judge in D.C]
"If it weren't for lawyers, I'd still be three-fifths of
a man." (2004)
U.S. Supreme Court Justices on the right to trial by jury:
Justice William O. Douglas
"The Massachusetts Body of Liberties was a new Magna Carta.
It contained many of the seeds of the civil liberties which today
distinguish us from the totalitarian systems, including the right
to trial by jury." (1954)
Justice Hugo Black
"Our duty to preserve the Seventh Amendment is a matter of
high Constitutional importance. The founders of our country thought
that trial by civil jury was an essential bulwark of civil liberty
and it must be scrupulously safeguarded." (1939, 1943)
Justice Ward Hunt
"Twelve jurors know more of the common affairs of life than
does one man, and they can draw wiser and safer conclusions than
a single judge." (1873)
Quotations excerpted from In Defense of Trial by Jury: Vols. I
and II by the American Jury Trial Foundation (1993)
- As quoted by Carol Leonnig in "A Lifetime
of Faith in the Law" (Washington Post 9/21/04). All
other excerpts from In Defense of Trial by Jury.
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