Bill of Rights · 7th Amendment
Seventh Amendment
Ratified December 15, 1791
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
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.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
In federal civil lawsuits where the amount in dispute is more than twenty dollars, you have the right to a jury trial. Once a jury has decided the facts, federal courts cannot re-examine those facts except under traditional legal rules.
What this means for you
This amendment applies only to federal civil cases, lawsuits in federal court that are not criminal cases. State civil cases follow state rules, which are usually similar but not identical.
The twenty-dollar threshold has never been adjusted for inflation. In 1791, twenty dollars was a meaningful amount of money. Today, almost any federal lawsuit clears it. In practice, the right to a civil jury trial is available in nearly every federal civil case, though many cases are settled or decided by judges before reaching a jury.
Civil juries decide questions of fact (what happened) and judges decide questions of law (which rules apply). The Seventh Amendment protects the jury's role on factual questions. Once the jury has decided, judges cannot substitute their own factual findings.
About
The Seventh Amendment was ratified in 1791 and applies only to civil cases in federal court. It is one of the few Bill of Rights provisions that has not been extended to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. States are not constitutionally required to provide jury trials in civil cases, though most do as a matter of state law or state constitution.
"Common law" refers to the legal tradition inherited from England, in which judges develop legal rules through decisions in individual cases over time. This is in contrast to "civil law" (legal codes adopted as comprehensive statutes) and "equity" (a separate historical court system that handled cases where money damages were not the appropriate remedy). The amendment protects jury rights in cases that would have been heard in common-law courts in 1791.
The twenty-dollar threshold has been the subject of occasional academic discussion but has never been seriously challenged or amended.