Published
June 15, 2026
One of the grievances that helped spark our nascent nation was the British government’s dismantling the right to a trial by jury. The right to be judged by your peers was a core legal protection undergirded by centuries of English legal tradition, and one that was often under attack by the British government in the prelude to the American Revolution. Just as the Declaration challenged the abrogation of this right in 1776, the Litigation Center has sought to vindicate the right to a jury trial in modern times.
The History
Before the Revolution, British authorities had increasingly bypassed juries in favor of other proceedings, including removing cases from colonial courts and transferring them to juryless admiralty courts where government officials acted as prosecutor, judge, and factfinder. Colonists viewed this shift as a direct threat to fairness and accountability. Without juries, the same government bringing charges could effectively control the outcome. In response, the Continental Congress in 1765 had declared that “trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies,” and protested the extension of the “jurisdiction of the Admiralty.” The Continental Congress in 1774 repeated this complaint. The outcry reached its crescendo in 1776, when the Declaration decried the Crown’s repeated efforts to deprive colonists “of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”
This deprivation was not a passing concern, but reflected a deep fear of unchecked government authority, and one that was foundational to the American legal system. After independence, our new nation moved quickly to enshrine the jury right. The Constitution guarantees jury trials in criminal cases, and the Seventh Amendment extended that protection to civil disputes. Indeed, the right was so central that its absence from the original Constitution became a focal point of Anti-Federalist criticism. Its eventual inclusion in the Bill of Rights reflected a national consensus: justice must not be monopolized by the government.
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Why the Jury Right Still Matters
The right to a jury trial still matters today, as a check on government power, a source of legitimacy for legal verdicts, and a safeguard of fairness for all parties in the legal system. These protections are particularly important in today’s administrative state, where agencies possess significant authority to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate alleged violations—often within the same institutional structure. And for today’s business community, which regularly appears before administrative tribunals and regulators, the right to a jury trial is not an abstract constitutional principle. It is a critical safeguard against concentrated regulatory power.
The Litigation Center has long fought to protect the sanctity of the jury process. Historically, much of our work has focused on protecting juries from undue influence by crackpot theories and charlatan expert witnesses. After the Court’s 1993 decision in Daubert, we filed many briefs urging rigor by the courts in performing their gatekeeping function for the admission of expert evidence. We helped persuade the Court in General Electric v. Joiner to reject the idea that appellate courts should be more forgiving of errors in admitting evidence than excluding it. And in Kumho Tire v. Carmichael, we helped convince the Court that the gatekeeping obligation extends to all expert evidence and not just scientific evidence.
In addition to the Litigation Center’s early focus on protecting the integrity of the jury system, we’re in the fight against the administrative state’s war on businesses’ right to a jury trial. We filed a brief in the recent landmark decision, SEC v. Jarkesy, in which the Supreme Court held that when the Securities and Exchange Commission seeks civil penalties for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial that the SEC cannot circumvent through its administrative enforcement proceedings. That decision has opened a new front in litigation against the administrative state, and it’s one where we’ve been active defending companies’ jury right. And we don’t intend to stop.
Carrying Forward a Founding Principle
The Declaration of Independence reminds us that the erosion of structural legal protections often begins gradually—with procedural shortcuts, shifting forums, or the concentration of decision-making authority in government hands. In defending that right through litigation, advocacy, and constitutional interpretation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others continue to advance a principle at the heart of the American experiment: that power must be checked, justice must be impartial, and the people themselves must retain a voice in the administration of law.
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About the authors
Daryl Joseffer
Daryl Joseffer is president at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A former principal deputy solicitor general, Joseffer has argued 12 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and briefed many more. He has argued dozens of appeals in other courts across the country.
Mariel Brookins
Mariel Brookins is counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In this capacity, she handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
