How Does The 7th Amendment Affect American Citizens

The 7th amendment was introduced as part of the Bill of Right in September 5, 1789 to be put into the constitution. This amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. This amendment was put into the constitution due to previous conditions. These previous conditions were terrible and brought on by King George the 3rd. During King Georges rule he got rid of trials by jury in the Colonies. This made colonists highly upset, which would be one of the leading causes of the American Revolution. When the original members of the constitutional convention wrote the Bill of Rights, they understood how important it was to have a fair court system, so they made sure that the right to have a trial by jury was an official law of the United States. The 7th Amendment states: '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.' In layman’s terms, civil cases (non-criminal cases between private parties) heard in federal courts are guaranteed trial by jury as long as the amount of money in question is greater than $20 dollars. There was a problem with the ratification of the Bill of Rights by the time it was submitted to the states. Which means there was a problem getting the seventh amendment included in the whole Bill of Rights ratified. Most of the Federalists that were previously opposed to the Bill of Rights had adopted and different attitude towards it and were now campaigning it for publication. Of course the Ani-Federalists did not want the Bill of Rights to be added to the constitution, realizing that the Bill's adoption would most likely reduce the possibility of a second constitutional convention, which the Anti-Federalists deeply wanted. Anti-Federalists argued that the Bill left the most objectionable portions of the Constitution intact. On September 5, 1789 James Madison proposed the 7th amendment to be put into the Constitution. There were nine out of twelve votes for it to be ratified into the Constitution. Supporters of this amendment would have been the Founding Fathers, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and of course James Madison. Members of the first congress would also have supported this amendment. People from the …show more content…
This amendment lays out a person’s right to a trial by jury. It tempers the law to community standards by having a person’s "peers" decide who is right and who is wrong. This amendment permits for the difference between physical and social circumstances in each community. For example, in a small town, failure to shovel the snow off the side walk is not big thing. Everyone in a small town expects everyone else to be careful while waking in the snow, and anyone trying to sue will have a hard time getting a jury to agree said person is at fault for the other person slipping. If someone does not shovel the snow in down town New York, where everyone expects the sidewalks to be safe to walk on, the jury is likely to decide against the person who failed to shovel the section of sidewalk they are responsible for. Those examples are the 7th amendment in action. This amendment adjusts the law so your community helps make the