In recent years corporations have racked up significant victories before the U.S. Supreme Court a corporate windfall that has come at the expense of Americans who are unable to win redress for their injuries. These decisions have also worked an often overlooked harm: They have made it harder for the civil jury to play its constitutional function in our American system of government.
The jury is more than just a means of dispute resolution, just a fact-finding appendage to the court. It is a structural element of our system of separated powers. Alexis de Tocqueville described the civil jury as an "institution of government" and a "form of the sovereignty of the people." The civil jury, according to William Blackstone, "preserves in the hands of the people that share which they ought to have in the administration of public justice, and prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy citizens."
