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The 6th and 7th Amendments are criminal amendments alongside the 5th and 14th Amendments. There were two main reasons why the Sixth Amendment and Seventh Amendment were created. Firstly, these amendments responded to and strengthened previous British criminal prosecutions where only magistrates and judges would collect evidence and ask questions. Second, it was influenced by the enforcement of the sugar acts, where the British sent colonials to Vice-Admiralty courts outside the colonies, without juries, and no representation. The Sixth responds to these concerns, creating a court framework so that criminal prosecutions would consist of a jury of peers to eliminate bias and guarantees the accused rights to a speedy, impartial, public trial. Now, the Sixth Amendment is more commonly understood to guarantee the accused rights to an attorney, no matter the cost.
However, this only existed after the Gideon vs. Wainwright court case, where Gideon, denied the right to an attorney after being convicted of a break-in, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment Rights were violated. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, and now the right to an attorney is explicitly and widely known to be incorporated within the Sixth Amendment. There are several other occurrences where the Sixth protected the accused’s rights after their right to a speedy trial was violated. For example, Zedner vs. United States is a criminal case where the district court judge convinced JACOB Zedner to waive his right to a speedy trial.
Zedner, four years later, appealed to the Supreme Court, stating that waiving his rights violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment. In the end, all judges ruled in his favor. The Sixth, as demonstrated, is an essential part of the Amendments that protect the rights of the accused and creates a fairer and more impartial criminal prosecution system.
The Seventh Amendment states that both parties have the right to a jury on civil cases that exceed twenty dollars. The second clause of the Seventh states a similar case to the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy. Civil cases will not be re-examined unless according to the standard law rules. Recently, however, the decision to use civil juries has been declining partly because of many negative downsides, including the fact that people are less willing to pay lawyer fees for a jury, jury trials for civil cases are generally more time-consuming for all parties, and State governments can modify the threshold(money needed)until the use of juries in civil cases are allowed.
Since the Seventh Amendment was created to serve as a means of representation, the original purpose of the Seventh Amendment to represent the American people may seem outdated. However, it still must be understood that both the 6th and 7th Amendments are significant to protect and ensure the rights of the accused. Otherwise, accused people would not have rights and face extreme bias and conviction rates within court systems.