Opinion of the Court. 130 U. S. 210, 224; Parsons v. District of Columbia, 170 U. S. 45. The Court of Appeals was unanimous in maintaining the validity of the proceedings looking to a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace. But there was a difference of opinion between the two associate justices and the chief justice upon the question whether such a trial before the justice of the peace would be a trial by jury, according to the common law and the Constitution; as well as upon the question whether the trial by jury, allowed by Congress in the Supreme Court of the District, upon appeal from the judgment of the justice of the peace, and upon the condition of giving bond to pay the final judgment of the appellate court, satisfied the requirements of the Constitution. I. The Congress of the United States, being empowered by the Constitution "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the seat of the National Government, has the entire control over the District of Columbia for every purpose of government, national or local. It may exercise within the District all legislative powers that the legislature of a State might exercise within the State; and may vest and distribute the judicial authority in and among courts and magistrates, and regulate judicial proceedings before them, as it may think fit, so long as it does not contravene any provision. of the Constitution of the United States. Kendall v. United States, (1838) 12 Pet. 524, 619; Mattingly v. District of Columbia, (1878) 97 U. S. 687, 690; Gibbons v. District of Columbia, (1886) 116 U. S. 404, 407. It is beyond doubt, at the present day, that the provisions of the Constitution of the United States securing the right of trial by jury, whether in civil or in criminal cases, are applicable to the District of Columbia. Webster v. Reid, (1850) 11 How. 437, 460; Callan v. Wilson, (1888) 127 U. S. 540, 550; Thompson v. Utah, (1898) 170 U. S. 343. The decision of this case mainly turns upon the scope and effect of the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. It may therefore be convenient, before particularly examining the acts of Congress now in question, to Opinion of the Court. refer to the circumstances preceding and attending the adoption of this Amendment, to the contemporaneous understanding of its terms, and to the subsequent judicial interpretation thereof, as aids in ascertaining its true meaning, and its application to the case at bar. II. The first Continental Congress, in the Declaration of Rights adopted October 14, 1774, unanimously resolved that "the respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law." 1 Journals of Congress, 28. The Ordinance of 1787 declared that the inhabitants of the Northwest Territory should "always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the trial by jury,” “and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law." 1 Charters and Constitutions, 431. The Constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, merely provided in article 3, section 3, that "the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury." In the Convention which framed the Constitution, a motion to add this clause, "and a trial by jury shall be preserved as usual in civil cases," was opposed by Mr. Gorham of Massachusetts, on the ground that "the constitution of juries is different in different States, and the trial itself is usual in different cases, in different States;" and was unanimously rejected. 5 Elliott's Debates, 550. Mr. Hamilton, in number 81 of the Federalist, when discussing the clause of the Constitution which confers upon this court "appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make," and again, in more detail, in number 83, when answering the objection to the want of any provision securing trial by jury in civil actions, stated the diversity then existing in the laws of the different States regarding appeals and jury trials; and especially pointed out that in the New England States, and in those alone, appeals were allowed, as of course, from one jury to another until there had been two verdicts on one side, and in no other State but Georgia was there any Opinion of the Court. appeal from one to another jury. The diversity in the laws of the several States, he insisted, "shows the impropriety of a technical definition derived from the jurisprudence of any particular State," and "that no general rule could have been fixed upon by the Convention which would have corresponded with the circumstances of all the States." And he suggested that "the legislature of the United States would certainly have full power to provide that in appeals to the Supreme Court there should be no reëxamination of facts where they had been tried in the original causes by juries;" but if this "should be thought too extensive, it might be qualified with a limitation to such causes only as are determinable at common law in that mode of trial." 2 Federalist, (ed. 1788) pp. 319321, 335, 336. At the first session of the first Congress under the Constitution, Mr. Madison, in the House of Representatives, on June 8, 1789, submitted propositions to amend the Constitution by adding, to the clause concerning the appellate jurisdiction of this court, the words, "nor shall any fact, triable by a jury, according to the course of the common law, be otherwise reexaminable than according to the principles of the common law," and, to the clause concerning trial by jury, these words: "In suits at common law, between man and man, the trial by jury, as one of the best securities to the rights of the people, ought to remain inviolate." 1 Annals of Congress, 424, 435. And those propositions, somewhat altered in form, were embodied in a single article, which was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, to the legislatures of the several States, and upon being duly ratified by them, became the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, in these words: "In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." A comparison of the language of the Seventh Amendment, as finally made part of the Constitution of the United States, with the Declaration of Rights of 1774, with the Ordinance Opinion of the Court. of 1787, with the essays of Mr. Hamilton in 1788, and with the amendments introduced by Mr. Madison in Congress in 1789, strongly tends to the conclusion that the Seventh Amendment, in declaring that "no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reëxamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law," had in view the rules of the common law of England, and not the rules of that law as modified by local statute or usage in any of the States. This conclusion has been established, and "the rules of the common law" in this respect clearly stated and defined, by judicial decisions. In United States v. Wonson, (1812) 1 Gallison, 5, a verdict and judgment for the defendant having been rendered in the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts in an action of debt for a penalty, the United States. appealed to the Circuit Court, and were held not to be entitled to try by a new jury in that court facts which had been tried and determined by the jury in the court below. "We should search in vain," said Mr. Justice Story, "in the common law, for an instance of an appellate court retrying the cause by a jury, while the former verdict and judgment remained in full force. The practice indeed seems to be a peculiarity of New England, and, if I am not misinformed, does not exist in more than one (if any) other State in the Union." And, after quoting the words of the Seventh Amendment, he observed: "Beyond all question, the common law here alluded to is not the common law of any individual State, (for it probably differs in all,) but it is the common law of England, the grand reservoir of all our jurisprudence." "Now, according to the rules of the common law, the facts once tried by a jury are never reëxamined, unless a new trial is granted in the discretion of the court before which the suit is depending, for good cause shown; or unless the judgment of such court is reversed by a superior tribunal, on a writ of error, and a venire facias de novo is awarded. This is the invariable usage, settled by the decisions of ages." 1 Gallison, 14, 20. In Parsons v. Bedford, (1830) 3 Pet. 433, this court, on writ of error to a lower court of the United States, held that Opinion of the Court. it had no power to reexamine facts tried by a jury in the court below, although that court was held in Louisiana, where Congress had enacted that the mode of proceeding should conform to the laws directing the mode of practice in the district courts of the State, and a statute of the State authorized its supreme court to try anew on appeal facts tried by a jury in a district court. Mr. Justice Story, in delivering the judgment of this court, expounding the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, after showing that, in the first clause, the words "suits at common law" were used in contradistinction to suits in equity and in admiralty, and included "not merely suits which the common law recognized among its old and settled proceedings," but all suits in which legal rights, and not equitable rights, were ascertained and determined, proceeded as follows: "But the other clause of the Amendment is still more important; and we read it as a substantial and independent clause. No fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reëxamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.' This is a prohibition to the courts of the United States to reëxamine any facts, tried by a jury, in any other manner. The only modes known to the common law to reëxamine such facts are the granting of a new trial by the court where the issue was tried, or to which the record was properly returnable; or the award of a venire facias de novo, by an appellate court, for some error of law which intervened in the proceedings." 3 Pet. 446-448. This last statement has been often reaffirmed by this court. Barreda v. Silsbee, (1858) 21 How. 146, 166; Justices v. Murray, (1869) 9 Wall. 274, 277; Miller v. Life Insurance Co., (1870) 12 Wall. 285, 300; Insurance Co. v. Comstock, (1872) 16 Wall. 258, 269; Insurance Co. v. Folsom, (1873) 18 Wall. 237, 249; Railroad Co. v. Fraloff, (1879) 100 U. S. 24, 31; Lincoln v. Power, (1894) 151 U. S. 436, 438; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago, (1897) 166 U. S. 226, 246. The Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, c. 20, drawn by Senator (afterwards Chief Justice) Ellsworth, and passedwithin six months after the organization of the Government under the Constitution, and on the day before the first ten |