A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.
Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the U.S. federal government. Under Article Three, the judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as lower courts created by Congress. Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason.
The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. This amendment codifies the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact.
In United States constitutional law, incorporation is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the courts held that its protections extended only to the actions of the federal government and that the Bill of Rights did not place limitations on the authority of the state and local governments. However, the post–Civil War era, beginning in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared the abolition of slavery, gave rise to the incorporation of other amendments, applying more rights to the states and people over time. Gradually, various portions of the Bill of Rights have been held to be applicable to state and local governments by incorporation via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. They are the companion to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rules promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act become part of the FRCP unless, within seven months, the United States Congress acts to veto them. The Court's modifications to the rules are usually based upon recommendations from the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary's internal policy-making body.
Federal tribunals in the United States are those tribunals established by the federal government of the United States for the purpose of resolving disputes involving or arising under federal laws, including questions about the constitutionality of such laws. Such tribunals include both Article III tribunals as well as adjudicative entities which are classified as Article I or Article IV tribunals. Some of the latter entities are also formally denominated as courts, but they do not enjoy certain protections afforded to Article III courts. These tribunals are described in reference to the article of the United States Constitution from which the tribunal's authority stems. The use of the term "tribunal" in this context as a blanket term to encompass both courts and other adjudicative entities comes from section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, which expressly grants Congress the power to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558 (1990), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that an action by an employee for a breach of a labor union's duty of fair representation entitled him to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment.
Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250 (2006), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the pleading standard for retaliatory prosecution claims against government officials. After a successful lobbying attempt by the CEO of a manufacturing company against competing devices that the US Postal Service supported, the CEO found himself the target of an investigation by US postal inspectors and a criminal prosecution that was dismissed for lack of evidence. The CEO then filed suit against the inspectors and other government officials for seeking to prosecute him in retaliation for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize postal policy. The Court ruled 5-2 that to prove that the prosecution was caused by a retaliatory motive, the plaintiff bringing such a claim must allege and prove that the criminal charges were brought without probable cause.
Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court case that sanctioned the imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were at least 16 years of age at the time of the crime. This decision came one year after Thompson v. Oklahoma, in which the Court had held that a 15-year-old offender could not be executed because to do so would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In 2003, the Governor of Kentucky Paul E. Patton commuted the death sentence of Kevin Stanford, an action followed by the Supreme Court two years later in Roper v. Simmons overruling Stanford and holding that all juvenile offenders are exempt from the death penalty.
Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court case that sanctioned the death penalty for mentally disabled offenders because the Court determined executing the mentally disabled was not "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment. However, because Texas law did not allow the jury to give adequate consideration as a mitigating factor to Johnny Paul Penry's intellectual disability at the sentencing phase of his murder trial, the Court remanded the case for further proceedings. Eventually, Penry was retried for capital murder, again sentenced to death, and again the Supreme Court ruled, in Penry v. Johnson, that the jury was not able to adequately consider Penry's intellectual disability as a mitigating factor at the sentencing phase of the trial. Ultimately, Penry was spared the death penalty because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which, while not directly overruling the holding in "Penry I", did give considerable negative treatment to Penry on the basis that the Eighth Amendment allowed execution of mentally disabled people.
Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749 (1985), was a Supreme Court case which held that a credit reporting agency could be liable in defamation if it carelessly relayed false information that a business had declared bankruptcy when in fact it had not.
Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal, 492 U.S. 257 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable fines does not apply to punitive-damage awards in civil cases when the United States is not a party.
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
A citizen's right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution. It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system.
Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782 (2001), is a United States Supreme Court case which concerned whether instructions given to a Texas jury were constitutionally adequate to emphasize the mitigating factors in sentencing of defendants who are intellectually disabled The Texas courts had determined the sentencing instructions were consistent with prior Supreme Court jurisprudence, but the Court in a divided decision reversed, finding the sentencing instructions insufficient. This was the second time Penry's case made it to the Supreme Court.
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Dice v. Akron, Canton & Youngstown R. Co., 342 U.S. 359 (1952), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that federal court rules apply when an action is brought pursuant to a federal right and where the substance of a state's rules would necessarily have an adverse effect on the protection of an individual's rights under federal law.
Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court found that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution forbid the imprisonment at hard labor without a jury trial for noncitizens convicted of illegal entry to or presence in the United States.
Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356 (1972), was a court case in the U.S. Supreme Court involving the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana law that allowed less-than unanimous jury verdicts to convict persons charged with a felony, does not violate the Due Process clause. This case was argued on a similar basis as Apodaca v. Oregon.
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. In May 2022, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held, under certain statutory provisions, the Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative adjudication of fraud claims without jury trials in their administrative proceedings with their own administrative law judges (ALJs) rather than Article III judges violated three provisions of the Constitution. The justices ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission violated the Seventh Amendment.
