The 7th Amendment to the United States Bill of Rights guarantees the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases. The actual text of the bill is 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 re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
The purpose of this Bill was to prevent the people of the colonies, soon to be United States, from becoming victims of a corrupt judge. The colonists had reason to be insistent that trial by jury be in the Constitution too. In England up until the late 1600s all judges served at the pleasure of the King – meaning he could take away their jobs at any time. As such, judges very rarely would make rulings that the King disagreed with, and in return, the King would allow them to do more or less anything they wanted. Rulings that stripped people of their lands, or pronounced guilt or innocence despite evidence to the contrary were fairly common. While this right was taken away in England in 1701, it remained in the colonies, and was a big enough deal that it was one of the many problems cited in the Declaration of Independence against King George III.
In common law (as opposed to criminal law), a judge can take a very active role in the trial. The judge can tell the jury to focus on particular pieces of evidence, he or she can discuss the evidence with the jury, and even give his or her opinion on guilt or innocence. At the same time, however, it is the jury’s job to make the decision. This has been established by common law in the United States and upheld by the Supreme Court. If the judge disagrees with the verdict than she can throw it out and request that a new trial be given. This power has also been upheld by the Supreme Court in the past, though in reality it is used very infrequently, and often only in the rare cases that the jury has made a decision that the judge feels is 100% directly contradictory to the evidence.
What a judge can NOT do, however, is replace the jury’s finding with one of her own. This is the type of power that has been forbidden by the 7th Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
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