Court Opinion

ID: 9458140
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:43:56.980793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.130475
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
*789The Seventh Amendment reads as follows :
“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 reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
The Constitutionally mandatory character of the twelve member jury in Seventh Amendment cases was unmistakably enunciated by the Supreme Court in the civil case of Capital Traction Company v. Hof, 174 U.S. 1, 19 S.Ct. 580, 43 L.Ed. 873 (1899).
This is the last Supreme Court case directly in point. It is binding on the inferior courts until such time as it may be overruled by the same Court which decided it.
The present majority opinion does not discuss Hof. This despite the fact that the opinion there rendered was most thoroughly researched and is a definitive analysis of the Seventh Amendment, handed down in a day when Mr. Chief Justice Fuller presided, serving with jurists like Mr. Justice Harlan, Mr. Justice Gray, and Mr. Justice White, later Chief Justice of the United States. Hof repeatedly stated that trial by jury in the primary and usual sense of the term at common law and in the American constitutions is “a trial by a jury of 12 men in the presence and under the superintendence of a judge empowered to instruct them, * * *.”
Indeed, the Court said, “This proposition has been so generally admitted, arid so seldom contested, that there has been little occasion for its distinct assertion. Yet there are unequivocal statements of it to be found in the books.” Whereupon, the Court proceeded to catalog those statements, including a decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio that the requirement of twelve men for a jury at common law “is as well settled as any legal proposition can be”.
I do not know whether the widow in the case now before us can, or will, seek certiorari in the Supreme Court. She should not have to do so. The burden should be on those who seek to overturn a rule of Constitutional Law that has stood since 1789 — until it occurred to someone that this emphatic pronouncement of both the Constitution and the Supreme Court could be overturned by a local rule for the sake of convenience.
I must say further that even if I were without the guidance of Hof I would nevertheless dissent. If, for reasons of convenience, a District Court by local rule may reduce the size of a jury from, twelve to six, why may it not on the same reasoning reduce the number to three, or some other number which would greatly impair, if not effectually destroy, the reasons underpinning trial by jury?
We live in a time of great emphasis on constitutional rights, particularly the rights of those charged with crime or who wish to undermine by whatever means available the effectiveness of those charged with the performance of official duty. In my opinion, the greatest of all constitutional rights is the right of trial by jury. I would not see it impaired by tKe most insignificant scintilla, much less by a rule which has the potential of eventually emasculating it.
Rule 48 is to me crystal clear. It means that only by stipulation of the parties may a jury be reduced to less than twelve. The Rule, of course, has the effect of a statute. Courts cannot alter or revise statutes. I emphatically disagree with the idea that a statute may be parsed away [in fact, repealed] by court order on the theory that those who enacted it in plain and unambiguous terms were actually under a misapprehension as to some other rule of law. If the Rule is to be abrogated it should *790be done by the procedure available to those who would seek that end.
Moreover, “the receipt [by the Supreme Court] of a local rule without objection” does not indicate “tacit approval of the rule”. The judicial power of United States Courts reaches only to cases and controversies. The Supreme Court renders no advisory opinions, either by silence or otherwise.
I would reverse and remand this case for a new trial before twelve jurors.