The right to trial by jury in civil cases is a fundamental right that is necessary to preserve our precious liberty. As with other fundamental rights, its purpose is to level the playing field. Juries are composed of ordinary people empowered to make binding decisions that affect the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens. While powerful corporations can readily influence legislators and judges, who are subject to political pressures, they have no similar control over jurors, who do not run for election, do not seek appointment, and do not carry into their deliberations

any political "debt." Indeed, the position of juror is one of the few constitutional offices in this country that remains open to the weakest and least wealthy members of society, and yet it is a position that carries with it a power that may be exercised over even the most powerful and wealthiest interests.

Those interests fear such power in the hands of ordinary people, and therefore relentlessly seek to limit the power of juries by advancing a number of causes, including "tort reform" and mandatory arbitration. Our founding fathers viewed trial by jury as essential to secure liberty and anticipated that there would be assaults on that right. It is for this reason that the right to trial by jury is guaranteed by both the U.S. and Alabama constitutions:

George Washington, the father of our country and the first President of the United States, said "There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury."

John Adams, the second President of the United States, said "Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle and fed and clothed like swine and hounds."

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States, said "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

James Madison, the author of the Constitution and the fourth President of the United States, said "Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature."

John Quincy Adams, the fifth President of the United States, said "The struggle for American independence was for chartered rights, for English liberties, for trial by jury, habeas corpus and Magna Carta."

Patrick Henry of Virginia, a patriot best remembered for having said "Give me liberty or give me death!" also said "Trial by jury is the best appendage of freedom by which our ancestors have secured their lives and property. I hope we shall never be induced to part with that excellent mode of trial."

Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, said "The friends and adversaries of the plan of the convention, if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Alabama native Hugo Black said "Our duty to preserve the Seventh Amendment is a matter of high Constitutional importance. The founders of our country thought that trial by civil jury was an essential bulwark of civil liberty and it must be scrupulously safeguarded."

Having been forewarned by our founding fathers, we should not be surprised that the powerful and wealthy corporate interests that today wield so much influence with elected and appointed officials at all levels of government - but not with juries - have struggled mightily to destroy or at least greatly restrict and limit the right to trial by jury.