Sixth Amendment and Seventh Amendment

Sixth Amendment and Seventh Amendment

by Sulymar
(Bronx, New York )

How have the Sixth and Seventh Amendments changed the United States?

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Sixth Amendment and Seventh Amendment

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Nov 03, 2010
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Sixth and Seventh Amendments
by: The Minuteman

Thanks for your question Sulymar! The Sixth Amendment guarantees people of certain rights if they are accused of a crime. This is a very important set of rights because it limits the power of whoever is in the position of authority. The legal authority, whether a policeman, a judge or a prosecuting attorney must follow these rules. If these things were not spelled out the authority could arbitrarily make up accusations and punishments based on whatever whim he had! He could say "well this person stole some money," and throw them in jail FOREVER if he wanted to! No trial, no jury, no attorney to help them! That sort of thing happened with monarchs and judges in Europe, which is exactly what the Founding Fathers were trying to avoid when they created this Amendment to the US Constitution!

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the following rights:

1. The right to a speedy trial
2. The right to a public trial
3. The right to be judged by an impartial jury
4. The right to be notified of the nature and circumstances of the alleged crime
5. The right to confront witnesses who will testify against the accused
6. The right to find witnesses who will speak in favor of the accused
7. The right to have a lawyer

You can read more about the Sixth Amendment here.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees you certain rights if you are accused in a civil matter, not a criminal matter. It guarantees that the facts must be looked at by a jury and that the facts can never be looked at again by another court, meaning you can only be tried once over the same issue.

You can read more about the Seventh Amendment here.

So you can see that the Founders were very concerned about protecting people who are accused of crimes. Why was this so important? They were, for the most part, descendants of people who had fled Europe in order to get away from kings who executed arbitrary power over their subjects, throwing them in prison or even executing people who simply disagreed with them or held differing religious beliefs or presented some kind of political opposition. These amendments are definite limitations on arbitrary power being exercised by those in authority in order to protect innocent people.

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