The United States, in their
united or collective capacity, are the OBJECT to which all general
provisions in the Constitution must necessarily be construed to refer.
Now it is evident that though trial by jury, with various limitations,
is known in each State individually, yet in the United States, as such,
it is at this time altogether unknown, because the present federal
government has no judiciary power whatever; and consequently there is no
proper antecedent or previous establishment to which the term heretofore
could relate. It would therefore be destitute of a precise meaning, and
inoperative from its uncertainty.
As, on the one hand, the form of the provision would not fulfil the
intent of its proposers, so, on the other, if I apprehend that intent
rightly, it would be in itself inexpedient. I presume it to be, that
causes in the federal courts should be tried by jury, if, in the State
where the courts sat, that mode of trial would obtain in a similar case
in the State courts; that is to say, admiralty causes should be tried in
Connecticut by a jury, in New York without one. The capricious operation
of so dissimilar a method of trial in the same cases, under the same
government, is of itself sufficient to indispose every wellregulated
judgment towards it.
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