This coming Thursday, June 12th, the Court will decide whether to grant certiorari (or whether to request a response) to the Institute for Justice's petition for certiorari in Thomas v. County of Humboldt, a case which asks the Court to incorporate the Seventh Amendment civil jury trial right through the Fourteenth Amendment against the States.
The Bill of Rights was originally enacted in 1791 to constrain Congress; protections against state overreach were left to state constitutions. But the Fourteenth Amendment was created to provide federal protection against state power; and since the Civil War, the Court has held (through a process called "incorporation") that nearly all the Bill of Rights applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.
The right to civil jury trial was among the three civil rights most deeply rooted in American history and tradition at the time of the framing of the federal Bill of Rights along with the right to criminal jury trial and the right to the free exercise of religion. The right is by far and away the most important right in the Bill of Rights that has not yet been incorporated; the other two unincorporated rights are the Third Amendment's protection against the quartering of soldiers in peoples' homes (a practice that no longer happens) and the right to indictment by a grand jury (which is meaningless since prosecutors can persuade grand juries to indict even "a ham sandwich").
