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Does the Arizona Constitution Allow Juryless Trial by Bureaucrats?

January 22, 2025
by Timothy Sandefur

The right to trial by jury is one of the most cherished of American liberties. In fact, a primary cause of the American Revolution was the decision by British officials to establish a juryless court system known as vice-admiralty to decide tax cases in America. Normal rules of evidence and procedure didn’t apply in vice-admiralty courts; the accused wasn’t entitled to a lawyer, for example, and even if he won he couldn’t sue officials for wrongfully prosecuting him, because those officials were given legal immunity. John Adams considered the scheme “the most grievous” of all the abuses that led Americans to declare independence.

But 250 years later, Americans often find themselves in precisely the same situation, due to the growth of bureaucracies that enjoy power to write the rules, investigate alleged violations, and prosecute people in their own special courts — where the accused gets no jury trial and the agency that brings the charges also renders the decision.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declared schemes like this unconstitutional. That case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, involved the federal agency charged with enforcing the rules of the stock market. It began when the commission accused investment adviser George Jarkesy of violating anti-fraud provisions of federal securities law. Fraud is a crime, which means Jarkesy should have been entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment. But the commission decided instead to try him in its own in-house administrative hearing, before an administrative law judge appointed by the commission itself.

Read the rest of the op-ed in the State Court Report.

Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.

 

 

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