Cite as: 518 U. S. 415 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
damages as an independent basis on which the "court above" may grant a new trial but makes no mention of a requirement that the trial judge must so recommend. 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *387.
Even when read most favorably to petitioner, therefore, no meaningful distinction exists between the common-law practice by which the "court above" considered a new trial motion in the first instance, and the practice challenged here, by which an appellate court reviews a district court's ruling on a new trial motion. See Riddell, 26 Yale L. J., at 57. As Justice Stone explained, in a dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice Hughes, Justice Brandeis, and Justice Cardozo:
"[The Seventh Amendment], intended to endure for un-numbered generations, is concerned with substance and not with form. There is nothing in its history or language to suggest that the Amendment had any purpose but to preserve the essentials of the jury trial as it was known to the common law before the adoption of the Constitution. For that reason this Court has often refused to construe it as intended to perpetuate in changeless form the minutiae of trial practice as it existed in the English courts in 1791. From the beginning, its language has been regarded as but subservient to the single purpose of the Amendment, to preserve the essentials of the jury trial in actions at law, serving to distinguish them from suits in equity and admiralty, see Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 446, and to safeguard the jury's function from any encroachment which the common law did not permit.
and circumstances of the particular case, and directed with a view to the attainment of justice"); Wood v. Gunston, Sty. 466, 82 Eng. Rep. 867 (K. B. 1655) ("It is in the discretion of the Court in some cases to grant a new tryal, but this must be a judicial, and not an arbitrary discretion, and it is frequent in our books for the Court to take notice of miscarriages of juries, and to grant new tryals upon them . . .").
445
Page: Index Previous 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007