Do You Still Have the Right to a Jury Trial? | Hacker News Reader

Do You Still Have the Right to a Jury Trial?

reason.com

42 pointsdaoboy45 comments

From the article: yes, you do. Compare the SEC's actions to a simple traffic ticket: a police officer gives you a ticket with a pre-set fine. This is like an SEC officer giving you a fine for some infraction. You can argue it out for a bit if you like, just like you can argue a ticket with the desk Sargeant (not that people do that). Age you do that, you can take it to court.

The only difference is that the experts at the SEC that you have to go through are called "administrative judges". It's kind of like a cop being called an "officer" even though they aren't like an armed forces officer at all.

> Compare the SEC's actions to a simple traffic ticket:

Which is also extremely problematic. Supposedly in a real courtroom, police are no different citizen-wise, but in traffic court, they're sacred.

Traffic court is a kangaroo court, and an 'administrative loss of constitutional rights cause it would be too expensive'.

Regardless who this person is (a hedge fund manager), if the government is fining or otherwise punishing you, it absolutely should be under a jury trial.

(Of course, we then deal with what a jury of your peers are, but that's another SCOTUS challenge.)

I sustained serious injuries (deep lacerations, multiple fractures) last May when a driver on a suspended learner's permit abruptly turned in front of me when I had the right of way through an intersection. He and the cop never showed up for the trial which the traffic court prosecutor only notified me of three days days in advance.

I received the redacted body camera video a month after the trial and had the displeasure of watching the asshole cop being chummy and apologetic to the driver because he had to write a single ticket for the existing suspension. No tickets at all for the multiple traffic violations despite having talked to a witness who saw everything happen (conveniently redacted from the video). Instead the driver got the absolute bare minimum wrist slap of another suspension which I have no confidence will actually be processed consecutively.

> The only difference is that the experts at the SEC that you have to go through are called "administrative judges".

That and banning you for life from your chosen progression.

Pretty sure most people wouldn’t want a traffic cop to be able to do that on a whim with the only recourse being to beg his boss to step it back.

Which, per the article, you can appeal to a real judge.

Yes, per the article:

> Only after an in-agency appeal can a defendant escape this regulatory Bermuda Triangle and seek redress in a federal appeals court. As evidenced by Jarkesy's case, this process costs defendants many years and untold legal fees.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Says everybody who has ever tried to talk their way out of a traffic ticket with the strategy from the beginning of Good Will Hunting.

All legal stuff is expensive. Source: was an expert witness, and made a nice sum.

SEC type stuff is guaranteed to be pricy because it's bound to be complicated, and require specialists.

On an error of process or because the outcome is wrong? An "appeal" can mean either of those things. If it's the former, that's a substantial limitation.

When I got my two "speeding tickets" in 25 years of driving what the officer really gave me was a summons to go to court. Or I could choose to plead guilty and pay the fine.

Both time I was always dealing with the courts. After the citation, never again do I deal with police until I have the chance to cross examine the cop in court.

Like this, any interaction with police unless the charge is serious enough that I need to be arrested until arraigned.

This entirely opposite to what happens with the EPA or SEC

Agencies that get to set policy and get to enforce policy have always bothered me. It's ripe for abuse via selective enforcement, controversy as we've seen, and promotes the expansion of federal agency budgets without a real value to the taxpayer.

It'd be better to have the "enforcement arm" of like EPA, FCC, etc be part of the justice department, whereas the "policy arm" of said organizations be controlled separately.

Separation of power.

> be part of the justice department

Still no separation of power, they're all the executive branch.

They were suggesting moving the other half, not the half you quoted that about.

It's true that they're both part of the executive branch. However, one would be the recipient of the "delegation" of legislative power, whereas the enforcement component would not. Additionally, I think it's fair to assume that GP intended that the DOJ entity would bring enforcement actions in Article III courts.

I'm not sure it's the right answer, but the proposal is interesting and deserves more than being dismissed out of hand.

The best solution would be to prohibit the executive branch from making up new laws and return that power to the legislative branch where it belongs.

If there's a mechanism for setting up the same kind of delegation inside that branch, sure!

If you want congress to directly decide every detail and change themselves, that doesn't sound like it will lead to effective government at all.

I always feel like when people say they want it returned to the legislative, that's the point. They don't want functional or effective government because they're secretly libertarians or conservatives.

If the voters want a functional or effective government, they can elect a Congress that is capable of passing legislation. Allowing the executive branch or the judicial branch to perform the role of the legislative branch enables voters to get away with electing dysfunctional Congresses that struggle to do basic tasks like elect a Speaker or pass a budget.

Returning the legislative powers to Congress would be as simple as allowing the executive branch agencies to continue proposing laws but Congress would have to affirmatively pass them into law instead of merely not pass a resolution blocking them.

Um... You think conservatives don't want an effective government? That's bizarre. They most certainly do. Their definition differs from yours, but is just as valid.

Anyway: the fundamental issue here us the huge mass of enforceable regulations that (a) have never been seen by a legislator, and (b) will be enforced by the same agency that created them.

How can you expect citizens to follow regulations, when these are so extensive that no one can possibly ever read them all? That is the real issue underlying these regulatory enforcement actions.

There is a good contingent of people where the long-term ideal is for the chunks of government they don't like to fail so they can be removed or cut way down.

So while they want an effective government, that doesn't mean they want particular sections of government to be effective.

^ Precisely.

I'd want the opposite.

At least a deciding judge is trained to be impartial. The general public are basically idiots. If you see how they make their life choices, who they vote for etc, I would not want to be judged by them. Hell even in the Netherlands which is supposed to be educated, the extreme-right fascists became the biggest party last week!

It also makes trials a big show with lawyers and prosecutors trying to exploit the weakness of playing at the jury's feelings which they aren't supposed to. No way.

Okay, but that's an argument for having a choice. If I was facing a marijuana conviction and had to choose between a jury of idiots and some right wing boomer judge with a stick up his ass, I'd choose the jury 100% of the time.

Having a choice doesn't take anything away from you.

Based on the title, I was assuming this was going to be about plea bargains and overbooked courts which more seriously undermine the public's right to due process imo.

This is a complicated issue but there are significant tradeoffs involved here. Intuitively, my assumption is that the effect of this action would be to kneecap regulatory agencies. This is not a legal opinion but jury trials are an enormous burden on the public and I don't think that it's unreasonable to try to avoid jury trials for many enforcement actions. I'm sure those who know the constitution and the law better than me can argue both sides of the issue, but cynically this seems part and parcel with the right wing efforts to dismantle the administrative state. While I have concerns about an overly powerful government, I am more concerned with unrestrained market forces.

Regulatory agencies can lower the burden the same way criminal courts do - offering plea deals.

That said, Id love nothing more than incarcerate half of Wall Street; but it must be done within the law.

The SEC managed fine without these powers until 2010, and they still take their share of cases to real court.

This is absolutely a political football, and there are definitely people supporting this just because they want to depower the SEC. That doesn't mean the SEC is in the right on the actual issue.

This isn’t a real controversy, this is a far-right fever dream conjured by the Federalist Society. They’ve dreamed of weakening the administrative state ever since its inception under Roosevelt - that’s all this is. This “Reason” piece is just federalist propaganda, it’s not a serious piece, because this is not a serious topic.

So you think some kangaroo court judge/jury/executioner, who deprives you of large quantities of money and forbiddance of your career, should be just decided and done?

Perhaps we can name one of them Judge Dredd. Cause that's an accurate comparison what's going on right now.

Punishments by the state should be done via jury trial, and only by jury trials.

It's our RIGHT for jury trials.

This case is a stalking horse for the substitution of power from bureaucratic agencies with defined missions and policy experts to politically-appointed judges. The administrative state as it began in earnest under Roosevelt is on the brink of extinction and under constant assault from a right-wing judiciary. The very real issues here are whether administrative agencies have the power to create and enforce regulations. This case is a piece of the puzzle in terms of undoing the landmark Chevron case that reaffirms the right of these administrative agencies to enact and enforce regulations that aren’t “arbitrary and capricious.” A layperson may not get that through looking at this case in isolation.

> This isn’t a real controversy

You just don't like that it is a real controversy. It is before the Supreme Court.

Anyone can bring a lawsuit and appeal to SCOTUS, with its panel deciding which cases to take. You're living in an illusion if you genuinely think the Supreme Court is not political in nature.

Nobody was arguing the Supreme Court isn't political.

The argument is that it's ridiculous to say "it's not a real controversy" when the Supreme Court has agreed to take the case, and a federal appeals court has already ruled against the government.

It’s not a real controversy in the sense that you actually understood what I meant, but chose to be obtuse and act as if you didn’t. Apply that same logic to the Supreme Court - this is an area of extremely well-settled law. The only controversy is that the far-right Supreme Court seems an opportunity to decimate the administrative state and invents a so-called legal controversy to achieve that aim.

I don't know how you can say "this is not a serious topic" when:

> The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled for Jarkesy in 2022.

And, of course, the Supreme Court is actually taking up the hearing, which they wouldn't do unless there were real issues to address.

I am in no way qualified to determine the validity of arguments on either side, but your offhand dismissal stands in stark contrast to the judges that obviously disagree, and who ruled differently.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/fifth-c...

> The Fifth Circuit is the federal appeals court covering Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas (where I live), and it has in recent years become the place where just about every right-wing litigant who can brings lawsuits to test novel and extreme legal arguments.

That settles it.

The 5th Circuit is a right-wing fever dream that makes disastrously unconstitutional rulings literally every day. Lay people who don’t follow the courts or have a legal background might find it hard to accept that our legal system has strayed so very far from constitutional principles, but there has been a fringe right-wing takeover of many courts around the country, and the 5th circuit and the Supreme Court are among the worst offenders.

As someone that has barely heard of this issue, why would adding a jury option to more judgements be a far-right fever dream...?

Nah, I'm pretty damn liberal and this is absolutely something I want. Authoritarian states are a nightmare, especially when people like Trump take the reigns.

Having seen jury trials in the west on TV and big screen and also having read about it, the idea of a jury trial scares me.

If you have a million dollars for discovery and motion practice yes. Otherwise no.

Yes! But most likely no.

Apart from the libertarian slant of the source, there is something to this, but should be narrowly confined to criminal and civil law.

Outside of these areas: Traffic courts across America, except for major cities, can be kangaroo courts after fees and fines. And, more broadly, the US has a legal system but not a justice system. Furthermore, binding arbitration is a fraudulent racket that sells the pretense of integrity and fairness but is nothing of the sort.

If people want to not be railroaded by an unfair practice, then they will have to organize, oppose it, and demand change.

binding arbitration - in principal it is a good thing. People settle their differences in private without involving the public. And between two well matched opponents it works well.

The problem is that I cant buy a car without being forced to sign one of those things.

> Traffic courts across America, except for major cities, can be kangaroo courts after fees and fines.

Traffic courts in major cities shouldn't be excepted. They're often just as bad, if not worse.

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