Leftists on Supreme Court sought to cancel right to jury trial for many Americans

It was unsuccessful, but the leftists on the U.S. Supreme Court recently assembled a strategy that would have canceled the constitutional right to a jury trial for multitudes of Americans in civil fights.

That would be any person who is accused of something by a federal agency, then brought to “trial” by that agency before one of the agency’s own “judges,” dispensing with the need for a jury.

The threat to the Constitution was profiled by Anastasia Boden in a report at Scotusblog.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Jackson had claimed there would be “chaos” if the majority, as it did, provided a real trial with a real jury for a dispute involving a man and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

They accused the majority in the case involving George Jarkesy of taking “a wrecking ball to… settled law and stable government practice.”

They claimed that letting agencies hear evidence and decide penalties on their own, without the ordinary rules of court procedure or a jury, was “so settled that it bec[ame] an undisputable reality of how ‘our Government has actually worked.'”

The majority disagreed, protecting the Constitution.

Dissenters insisted, according to the analysis, that the majority ruling was “a seismic shift in this Court’s jurisprudence” and “a devastating blow to the manner in which our government functions.”

Sotomayor claimed in-house judicial proceedings, including the imposition of penalties, was authoritized by more than 200 statutes.

“For those and countless other agencies, all the majority can say is tough luck,” she wrote.

She insisted that requiring a jury would undercut “important benefits” of decisions made by the agencies, for the agencies, in agency hearings.

Those would be “greater efficiency and expertise, transparency and reasoned decision making, as well as uniformity, predictability, and greater political accountability.”

The analysis noted, “The Jarkesy dissent was passionate and sweeping. But despite its claims, since the decision the sky has not fallen.”

The analysis explains Jarkesy’ case, for allegedly misleading investors, consumed more than a decade.

Before he reached a “real court,” a “quasi-court had already found him guilty,” the report said.

The SEC’s in-house prosecution involved, “no jury, the rules of evidence were looser, and the judge was embedded within the very agency prosecuting the case,” the report said. “Hearsay” even is allowed.

It all gave the SEC a “distinctively ‘home court’ advantage,’ so much that a study found the SEC won 90% of its in-house prosecutions.

“The Wall Street Journal reported that in fiscal year 2014, the SEC prevailed in 100% of its administrative proceedings, while prevailing in only 61% of cases in federal court. Anecdotal evidence suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, that ALJs feel pressure to rule for their agency-employer,” the report said.

The report warned, “If the court had accepted the SEC’s public rights theory, the 5th Circuit said, it would mean that ‘[w]hen the federal government sues, no jury is required. This is perhaps a runner-up in the competition for the ‘Nine Most Terrifying Words in the English Language.'”

Jury trials are promised in the Bill of Rights, and such civil disputes are addressed in the 7th Amendment.