At Volokh Conspiracy, Steven Calabresi: Should the Seventh Amendment Civil Jury Trial Right Apply to the States?. From the introduction:
This coming Thursday, June 12th, the Court will decide whether to grant certiorari (or whether to request a response) to the Institute for Justice's petition for certiorari in Thomas v. County of Humboldt, a case which asks the Court to incorporate the Seventh Amendment civil jury trial right through the Fourteenth Amendment against the States.
The Bill of Rights was originally enacted in 1791 to constrain Congress; protections against state overreach were left to state constitutions. But the Fourteenth Amendment was created to provide federal protection against state power; and since the Civil War, the Court has held (through a process called "incorporation") that nearly all the Bill of Rights applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.
The right to civil jury trial was among the three civil rights most deeply rooted in American history and tradition at the time of the framing of the federal Bill of Rights along with the right to criminal jury trial and the right to the free exercise of religion. The right is by far and away the most important right in the Bill of Rights that has not yet been incorporated; the other two unincorporated rights are the Third Amendment's protection against the quartering of soldiers in peoples' homes (a practice that no longer happens) and the right to indictment by a grand jury (which is meaningless since prosecutors can persuade grand juries to indict even "a ham sandwich").
Cases like Thomas v. County of Humboldt, which involve a dispute between the government and a private citizen, where petitioners are challenging millions of dollars of fines assessed against impoverished litigants in administrative proceedings by the government with no right to a civil jury trial, show that incorporation of the Seventh Amendment is as urgent as was incorporation of the Excessive Fines Clause in Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. 146 (2019). As the Supreme Court held last year in SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024) (requiring the SEC to litigate fraud cases in federal district court with a Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial), "[t]he right to trial by jury is 'of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right' has always been and 'should be scrutinized with the utmost care.'" Id. at 121. A continuing failure by the Supreme Court to incorporate the civil jury trial right against the States would thus be an embarrassing omission from the Court's caselaw given that this right is even more deeply rooted in American history and tradition than are almost any other right including especially the right to own a gun for one's own self-defense.
The Thomas case seeks to change that, and I think the Court should agree on this with the petitioners. …
Agreed. It's not my area, but I'm persuaded that all bill-of-rights rights are incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause, as rights one has as a citizen of the United States. I don't see any textual basis for distinguishing among those rights.
(Also the Seventh Amendment civil jury right should fully apply in U.S. territories as well — although it currently does not, on the basis of the Insular Cases — because the Insular Cases should be overruled.)
Posted at 6:01 AM