Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 18

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

is  that  the  plurality  subjected  the  ancient  guarantee  of  a 
unanimous jury verdict to its own functionalist assessment 
in the first place.  And Louisiana asks us to repeat the error 
today,  just  replacing  Apodaca’s  functionalist  assessment 
with our own updated version.  All this overlooks the fact 
that,  at  the  time  of  the  Sixth  Amendment’s  adoption,  the
right to trial by jury included a right to a unanimous ver-
dict.  When  the  American  people  chose  to  enshrine  that 
right in the Constitution, they weren’t suggesting fruitful
topics for future cost-benefit analyses.  They were seeking 
to  ensure  that  their  children’s  children  would  enjoy  the 
same hard-won liberty they enjoyed.  As judges, it is not our 
role  to  reassess  whether  the  right  to  a  unanimous  jury  is
“important enough” to retain.  With humility, we must ac-
cept that this right may serve purposes evading our current
notice.  We are entrusted to preserve and protect that lib-
erty,  not  balance  it  away  aided  by  no  more  than  social 
statistics.47 
—————— 

47 The  dissent  seems  to  suggest  that  we  must  abandon  the  Sixth 
Amendment’s historical meaning in favor of Apodaca’s functionalism be-
cause  a  parade  of  horribles  would  follow  otherwise.    In  particular,  the 
dissent reminds us that, at points and places in our history, women were 
not permitted to sit on juries.  See post, at 15–16.  But we hardly need 
Apodaca’s functionalism to avoid repeating that wrong.  Unlike the rule 
of  unanimity,  rules  about  who  qualified  as  a  defendant’s  “peer”  varied
considerably at common law at the time of the Sixth Amendment’s adop-
tion.    Reflecting  that  fact,  the  Judiciary  Act  of  1789—adopted  by  the 
same Congress that passed the Sixth Amendment—initially pegged the 
qualifications for federal jury service to the relevant state jury qualifica-
tion requirements.  1 Stat. 88.  As a result, for much of this Nation’s early
history the composition of federal juries varied both geographically and
over  time.  See  Hickey,  Federal  Legislation:  Improvement  of  the  Jury 
System in Federal Courts, 35 Geo. L. J. 500, 506–507 (1947); Taylor v. 
Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522, 536 (1975).  Ultimately, however, the people
themselves adopted further constitutional amendments that prohibit in-
vidious  discrimination.    So  today  the  Sixth  Amendment’s  promise  of  a 
jury  of  one’s  peers  means  a  jury  selected  from  a  representative  cross-
section of the entire community.  See Strauder, 100 U. S., at 307–308; 
Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128, 130 (1940); Taylor, 419 U. S., at 527.