Our Wonderful Bill of Rights: The Sixth and Seventh Amendments

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees our right to a trial by jury in a criminal case. How juries are selected and instructed, however, often determines how effective they are. Unfortunately, jurors are routinely screened on the basis of their philosophical or religious beliefs, and those who show any propensity for questioning the evidence in the case or the validity of the law are usually dismissed posthaste.

The Sixth Amendment states, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . . and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence."

Thomas Jefferson considered trial by jury to be "the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Every juror has the power to examine not only the facts of a case but the law itself, and to reject the application of the law if he finds it to be unjust in that particular case.

The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution protects our right to a trial by jury in a civil suit, but the growth of regulatory agencies has enabled unelected bureaucrats to bypass that safeguard - and instead act as prosecutor, judge, and jury.The Seventh Amendment states, "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 re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." In The Federalist Papers, James Madison asserted that "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Yet, the regulatory agencies that can decide the fate of all American businesses are characterized by this very accumulation of disparate powers.