30
Opinion of Scalia, J.
obviously correct. In my dissent in United States v. Wells, 519 U. S. 482, 510 (1997), I pointed out that the vast majority of judges who had confronted the question had placed the same construction on the federal statute criminalizing false statements to federally insured banks, 18 U. S. C. § 1014. I repeat this point to remind the Congress that an amendment to § 1014 would both harmonize these sections and avoid the potential injustice created by the Court's decision in Wells.
Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Parts I and III of the Court's opinion. I do not join Part II, however, and I dissent from the judgment of the Court, because I believe that depriving a criminal defendant of the right to have the jury determine his guilt of the crime charged—which necessarily means his commission of every element of the crime charged—can never be harmless.
I
Article III, § 2, cl. 3, of the Constitution provides: "The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury . . . ." The Sixth Amendment provides: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury . . . ." When this Court deals with the content of this guarantee—the only one to appear in both the body of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—it is operating upon the spinal column of American democracy. William Blackstone, the Framers' accepted authority on English law and the English Constitution, described the right to trial by jury in criminal prosecutions as "the grand bulwark of [the Englishman's] liberties . . . secured to him by the great charter." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *349. One of the indictments of the Declaration of Independence against King George III was that he had "subject[ed] us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitu-
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