The Seventh Amendment exacts a trial by jury according to the
course of the common law -- that is, by a unanimous verdict.
The first ten Amendments are not concerned with state action,
and deal only with federal action.
The Seventh Amendment applies only to proceedings in courts of
the United States; it does not in any manner govern or regulate
trials by jury in state courts, nor does it apply to an action
brought in the state court under the Federal Employers' Liability
Act.
A verdict in a state court in an action under the Employers'
Liability Act which is not unanimous, but which is legal under the
law of the state, is not illegal as violating the Seventh
Amendment.
While a state court may enforce a right created by a federal
statute,
Page 241 U. S. 212
such court does not, while performing that duty, derive its
authority as a court from the United States, but from the state,
and the Seventh Amendment does not apply to it.
128 Minn. 112 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the validity of a verdict and judgment
under the Employers' Liability Act and the application and effect
of the Seventh Amendment in suits in the state courts under that
Act, are stated in the opinion.
Page 241 U. S. 215
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
Counting upon the Employers' Liability Act of 1908 (c. 149, 35
Stat. 65), as amended by the Act of 1910 (c. 143, 36 Stat. 291),
the defendant in error sued in a state court to recover for the
loss resulting from the death of Nanos, his intestate, alleged to
have been occasioned by the negligence of the plaintiff in error
while he, Nanos, was in its employ and engaged in interstate
commerce.
Whatever may have been the controversies in the trial court
prior to the verdict of the jury in favor of the plaintiff, and the
contentions which were unsuccessfully urged in the court below to
secure a reversal of the judgment entered thereon, on this writ of
error they have all but one been abandoned, and hence have all but
one become negligible. As the one question here remaining was also
involved in five other cases pending under the Employers' Liability
Act on writs of error to the courts of last resort of Virginia,
Kentucky, and Oklahoma, those cases and this were argued together.
As the other cases, however, involve additional questions, we
dispose separately of this case in order to decide in this the one
question which is common to them all, and thus enable the other
cases,
Page 241 U. S. 216
if we deem it is necessary to do so, to be treated in separate
opinions.
By the Constitution and laws of Minnesota in civil causes, after
a case has been under submission to a jury for a period of twelve
hours without a unanimous verdict, five sixths of the jury are
authorized to reach a verdict, which is entitled to the legal
effect of a unanimous verdict at common law. When, in the trial of
this case, the court instructed the jury as to their right to
render a verdict under such circumstances, the defendant company
objected on the ground that, as the cause of action against it
arose under the Federal Employers' Liability Act -- in other words,
was federal in character -- the defendant was by the Seventh
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States entitled to have
its liability determined by a jury constituted and reaching its
conclusion according to the course of the common law, and hence to
apply the state statute would be repugnant to the Seventh
Amendment. This objection, which was overruled and excepted to, was
assigned as error in the court below, was there adversely disposed
of (128 Minn. 112), and the alleged resulting error concerning such
action is the one question which, we have said, is now urged for
reversal.
It has been so long and so conclusively settled that the Seventh
Amendment exacts a trial by jury according to the course of the
common law -- that is, by a unanimous verdict (
American
Publishing Co. v. Fisher, 166 U. S. 464;
Springville v. Thomas, 166 U. S. 707;
Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U. S.
1), that it is not now open in the slightest to question
that, if the requirements of that Amendment applied to the action
of the State of Minnesota in adopting the statute concerning a less
than unanimous verdict, or controlled the state court in enforcing
that statute in the trial which is under review, both the statute
and the action of the court were void because of repugnancy to the
Constitution of the United States. The one
Page 241 U. S. 217
question to be decided is therefore reduced to this: did the
Seventh Amendment apply to the action of the state legislature and
to the conduct of the state court in enforcing at the trial the law
of the state as to what was necessary to constitute a verdict?
Two propositions as to the operation and effect of the Seventh
Amendment are as conclusively determined as is that concerning the
nature and character of the jury required by that Amendment, where
applicable. (a) That the first ten Amendments, including, of
course, the
Seventh, are not concerned with state action, and deal only with
federal action. We select from a multitude of cases those which we
deem to be leading:
Barron v.
Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243;
Fox v.
Ohio, 5 How. 410,
46 U. S. 434;
Twitchell v.
Pennsylvania, 7 Wall. 321;
Brown v. New
Jersey, 175 U. S. 172,
175 U. S. 174;
Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78,
211 U. S. 93.
And, as a necessary corollary, (b) that the Seventh Amendment
applies only to proceedings in courts of the United States, and
does not in any manner whatever govern or regulate trials by jury
in state courts, or the standards which must be applied concerning
the same.
Livingston v.
Moore, 7 Pet. 469,
32 U. S. 552;
The Justices v.
Murray, 9 Wall. 274;
Edwards v.
Elliott, 21 Wall. 532;
Walker v. Sauvinet,
92 U. S. 90;
Pearson v. Yewdall, 95 U. S. 294. So
completely and conclusively have both of these principles been
settled, so expressly have they been recognized without dissent or
question almost from the beginning in the accepted interpretation
of the Constitution, in the enactment of laws by Congress and
proceedings in the federal courts, and by state constitutions and
state enactments and proceedings in the state courts, that it is
true to say that to concede that they are open to contention would
be to grant that nothing whatever had been settled as to the power
of state and federal governments or the authority of state and
federal courts and their mode of procedure from the beginning.
Doubtless it was
Page 241 U. S. 218
this view of the contention which led the Supreme Court of
Minnesota in this case and the courts of last resort of the other
states in the cases which were argued with this to coincide in
opinion as to the entire want of foundation for the proposition
relied upon, and in the conclusion that to advance it was virtually
to attempt to question the entire course of judicial ruling and
legislative practice, both state and national, which had prevailed
from the commencement. And it was, of course, presumably an
appreciation of the principles so thoroughly settled which caused
Congress, in the enactment of the Employers' Liability Act, to
clearly contemplate the existence of a concurrent power and duty of
both federal and state courts to administer the rights conferred by
the statute in accordance with the modes of procedure prevailing in
such courts. Indeed, it may not be doubted that it must have been
the same point of view which has caused it to come to pass that,
during the number of years which have elapsed since the enactment
of the Employers' Liability Act and the safety appliance act, and
in the large number of cases which have been tried in state courts
growing out of the rights conferred by those acts, the judgments in
many of such cases having been here reviewed, it never entered the
mind of anyone to suggest the new and strange view concerning the
significance and operation of the Seventh Amendment which was urged
in this case and the cases which were argued with it.
Under these circumstances, it would be sufficient to leave the
unsoundness of the proposition to the demonstration to result from
the application of the previous authoritative rulings on the
subject, and the force of the reasoning inherently considered upon
which they were based, as also upon its convincing power so aptly
portrayed by the opinions of the courts below in this and the other
cases which we have said were argued along with this.
Cheapeake
& Ohio Ry. Co. v. Carnahan, a Virginia case;
Ches
& & O.
Page 241 U. S. 219
R. Co. v. Kelly, 160 Ky. 296, 161 Ky. 655;
Louisville & Nash. R. Co. v. Stewart, 163 Ky. 823;
St. Louis & San Fran. R. Co. v. Brown, an Oklahoma
case. In view, however, of the grave misconception of the very
fundamentals of our constitutional system of government which is
involved in the proposition relied upon and the arguments seeking
to maintain it, and the misapplication of the adjudged cases upon
which the arguments rest, while not implying that the question is
an open one, we nevertheless notice a few of the principal
propositions relied upon.
1. It is true, as pointed out in
Walker v. New Mexico &
S. P. R. Co., 165 U. S. 593, and
in
Am. Publishing Co. v. Fisher, 166 U.
S. 464, that the right to jury trial which the Seventh
Amendment secures is a substantial one in that it exacts a
substantial compliance with the common law standard as to what
constitutes a jury. But this truth has not the slightest tendency
to support the contention that the substantial right secured
extends to, and is operative in, a field to which it is not
applicable and with which it is not concerned. It is also true, as
pointed out in the cases just cited, that, although territorial
courts of the United States are not constitutional courts,
nevertheless, as they are courts created by Congress and exercise
jurisdiction alone by virtue of power conferred by the law of the
United States, the provisions of the Seventh Amendment are
applicable in such courts. But this affords no ground for the
proposition that the Amendment is applicable and controlling in
proceedings in state courts deriving their authority from state
law, in the teeth of the express and settled doctrine that the
Amendment does not relate to proceedings in such courts.
2. The proposition that, as the Seventh Amendment is controlling
upon Congress, its provisions must therefore be applicable to every
right of a federal character created by Congress, and regulate the
enforcement of
Page 241 U. S. 220
such right, but in substance creates a confusion by which the
true significance of the Amendment is obscured. That is, it shuts
out of view the fact that the limitations of the Amendment are
applicable only to the mode in which power or jurisdiction shall be
exercised in tribunals of the United States, and therefore that its
terms have no relation whatever to the enforcement of rights in
other forums merely because the right enforced is one conferred by
the law of the United States. And, of course, it is apparent that
to apply the constitutional provision to a condition to which it is
not applicable would be not to interpret and enforce the
Constitution, but to distort and destroy it.
Indeed, the truth of this view and the profound error involved
in the contention relied upon is aptly shown by the further
propositions advanced in argument and based upon the premise
insisted upon. Thus, it is urged that if the limitation of the
Amendment applies to Congress so as to prevent that body from
creating a court and giving it power to act free from the
restraints of the Amendment, it must also apply, unless the
substance is to be disregarded and the shadow be made controlling,
to the power of Congress to create a right and leave the power to
enforce it in a forum to which the constitutional limitation is not
applicable. But this again enlarges the Amendment by causing it not
merely to put a limitation upon the power of Congress as to the
courts, constitutional or otherwise, which it deems fit to create,
but to engraft upon the power of Congress a limitation as to every
right of every character and nature which it may create, or, what
is equivalent thereto, to cast upon Congress the duty of subjecting
every right created by it to a limitation that such right shall not
be susceptible of being enforced in any court whatever, whether
created by Congress or not, unless the court enforcing the right
becomes bound by the restriction which the Amendment establishes.
It is
Page 241 U. S. 221
true that the argument does not squarely face the contention to
which it reduces itself, since it is conceded that rights conferred
by Congress, as in this case, may be enforced in state courts; but
it is said this can only be provided such courts, in enforcing the
federal right, are to be treated as federal courts, and be
subjected
pro hac vice to the limitations of the Seventh
Amendment. And, of course, if this principle were well founded, the
converse would also be the case, and both federal and state courts
would, by fluctuating hybridization, be bereft of all real,
independent existence. That is to say, whether they should be
considered as state or as federal courts would from day to day
depend not upon the character and source of the authority with
which they were endowed by the government creating them, but upon
the mere subject matter of the controversy which they were
considering.
But here again, the error of the proposition is completely
demonstrated by previous adjudications.
Martin v.
Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304,
14 U. S. 330;
Houston v.
Moore, 5 Wheat. 1,
18 U. S. 27-28;
Ex Parte
McNiel, 13 Wall. 236,
80 U. S. 243;
Claflin v. Houseman, 93 U. S. 130;
Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275;
Mondou v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co.,
223 U. S. 1,
223 U. S. 55-59.
Moreover, the proposition is in conflict with an essential
principle upon which our dual constitutional system of government
rests -- that is, that lawful rights of the citizen, whether
arising from a legitimate exercise of state or national power,
unless excepted by express constitutional limitation or by valid
legislation to that effect, are concurrently subject to be enforced
in the courts of the state or nation when such rights come within
in the general scope of the jurisdiction conferred upon such courts
by the authority, state or nation, creating them. This principle
was made the basis of the first Federal Judiciary Act, and has
prevailed in theory and practice ever since as to rights of every
character, whether derived from constitutional grant or
legislative
Page 241 U. S. 222
enactment, state or national. In fact, this theory and practice
is but an expression of the principles underlying the Constitution,
and which cause the governments and courts of both the nation and
the several states not to be strange or foreign to each other in
the broad sense of that word, but to be all courts of a common
country, all within the orbit of their lawful authority being
charged with the duty to safeguard and enforce the right of every
citizen without reference to the particular exercise of
governmental power from which the right may have arisen, if only
the authority to enforce such right comes generally within the
scope of the jurisdiction conferred by the government creating
them. And it is a forgetfulness of this truth which doubtless led
to the suggestion made in the argument that the ruling in
Mondou v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co.,
223 U. S. 1, had
overthrown the ancient and settled landmarks and had caused state
courts to become courts of the United States, exercising a
jurisdiction conferred by Congress, whenever the duty was cast upon
them to enforce a federal right. It is true, in the
Mondou
case, it was held that, where the general jurisdiction conferred by
the state law upon a state court embraced otherwise causes of
action created by an act of Congress, it would be a violation of
duty under the Constitution for the court to refuse to enforce the
right arising from the law of the United States because of
conceptions of impolicy or want of wisdom on the part of Congress
in having called into play its lawful powers. But that ruling in no
sense implied that the duty which was declared to exist on the part
of the state court depended upon the conception that, for the
purpose of enforcing the right, the state court was to be treated
as a federal court, deriving its authority not from the state
creating it, but from the United States. On the contrary, the
principle upon which the
Mondou case rested, while not
questioning the diverse governmental sources from
Page 241 U. S. 223
which state and national courts drew their authority, recognized
the unity of the governments, national and state, and the common
fealty of all courts, both state and national, to both state and
national Constitutions, and the duty resting upon them, when it was
within the scope of their authority, to protect and enforce rights
lawfully created, without reference to the particular government
from whose exercise of lawful power the right arose.
Affirmed.