Opinion ID: 1166838
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: the constitutional right to trial by jury in a civil case under oklahoma law

Text: ¶ 24 Today's summary judgment analysis constitutes an impermissible judicial intervention in the fact-finding process. It violates the plaintiff's fundamental-law right to trial by jury under the standards of Art. 2 § 19, Okl. Const. [31] That section keeps inviolate the common-law norms for drawing the line at which submission to the triers is a party's due. Because these standards are enshrined in the state constitution, they cannot be abrogated (impaired or abridged) by legislative or judicial action. [32] ¶ 25 In contrast to Oklahoma's system, the right to a jury in federal courts is governed by the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. [33] The primary purpose of the Seventh Amendment is not quite the same as that of Art. 2 § 19. It is to keep in effect the common-law line of demarcation between the duties of the court and those of the jury. Except as modified by the federal constitution itself, the right to trial by jury was frozen as it stood in the 1787 English jurisprudence. The trilogy's 1986 reformulation of traditional summary judgment procedure marks a significant departure from the U.S. Supreme Court's past Seventh-Amendment construction. [34] While the latter's jurisprudence is indeed binding upon federal courts, it does not affect the process of summary adjudication to be applied in the state courts. Because the Seventh Amendment is unenforceable against them, the states remain utterly free from its restraints. [35]