The Judiciary Continued in Relation to Trial by Jury
 From MCLEAN's Edition, New York.
HAMILTON

Federalist Paper #83

"Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between SILENCE and ABOLITION."

Now I agree with him, but there is also truth to what they are trying to argue here.  I take it to our current situation of the Treasury department taking over businesses.  If there are not specific instructions which limit his power to an exact reason at an exact time, it ALLOWS for the government to twist the meaning of the power and use it for other reasons.  I think that is the main argument of Hamilton's time for this abolishment.  If the government has a way to avoid it, then they will pursue that in time.

"The rules of legal interpretation are rules of COMMONSENSE, adopted by the courts in the construction of the laws."

Tell me...when you read the 2nd amendment, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  Is it that they can ban guns from non-militia men?  Is it anything other than the founders trying to engrave the right of gun ownership in our country?  Upon first read, common sense tells us that they put this law in place just so we could protect ourselves from external invasion.  The second is from internal tyrants.  Common sense tells us that much.  Only when lawyers come in trying to twists its meaning for their agenda's do we have this problem with guns.  What a travesty.

"The true test, therefore, of a just application of them is its conformity to the source from which they are derived."

Which means that we interpret them how?  We apply them just as when they were put into place.  That would mean we apply them with what our founders had in mind.  Which would imply that reading such writings as the federalist papers or Annapolis Convention debates would yield the meaning of our Constitution.  It would also mean that our Constitution is not living and breathing, but a document that is to be followed in its original form.  There is small leeway where the government can add amendments, but they cannot change any other portion of the Constitution. 

"the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government."

I have not researched the exact arguments Hamilton is speaking against, but I can imagine what they would entail.  A government not FORCED to bring civil cases to trial by jury, may ignore them all together.  I do not believe they all need trial by jury, so I can see his point in saying that the law will not change from what it was.  Civil cases brought to trial by jury would no doubt bring lots of unneeded wasted time to many citizens, for reasons they do not care about.  I believe criminal cases do need them, so in essence I agree with Hamilton.  It seems like the arguments he is reasoning against here are more fear mongering than anything else.  It is obvious that the Constitution would not force the courts to trial by jury for civil cases.  It would be absurd to do so.  Clearly abolishment is not in the Constitution either.  Why he spends so much time on it...must have had quite an opposition as he stated in his opening sentence.

"The sheriff, who is the summoner of ordinary juries, and the clerks of courts, who have the nomination of special juries, are themselves standing officers, and, acting individually, may be supposed more accessible to the touch of corruption than the judges, who are a collective body. It is not difficult to see, that it would be in the power of those officers to select jurors who would serve the purpose of the party as well as a corrupted bench."

Im just bringing this up because it brought the acorn allegations to mind.  They set up fake protests by hiring people for example.  It seems more corrupt than any other organization.  People believe they aren't corrupt because they are simply signing up voters.  The truth is finally coming out and they will burn for this I think.  Obama may or may not be linked, it doesn't really matter, but next election acorn will be on the outs.  The democrats will still have other outs for them to attempt for cheating, but I think people will be much more weary of them now and this will hurt them in voters who believe in honesty.  I can't wait for the trials to start on acorn.

"The minority of Pennsylvania have proposed this mode of expression for the purpose "Trial by jury shall be as heretofore'' and this I maintain would be senseless and nugatory."

It may have been nugatory at the time for many of the things he thought obvious.  Today we have liberals attacking the 2nd on a daily basis, yet at Hamilton's time it was probably nugatory to include any other forms of thought to the law.  Imagine if we had a paragraph explaining the law, right in the bill of rights.  Would that not make it impossible for the liberals to take away our guns at any point in the existence of our country?  Sometimes things are unneeded at the time, but as time passes, they may have been needed to fully put to rest their intentions.

I notice throughout how much power he gives to the states.  Instead of putting a law into place that would order the states to act in a certain way, he allows the states to create their own laws and says by leaving the Constitution open, the states are free to do as they please on the subject.  Today we micromanage everything, but a good leader knows how to delegate off, and not just to someone who works directly for them.  Governors should have much more power in their respective states.  I guess I would interpret that as the feds would have less power and Governor the same power making his more in comparison. 

"but will tend gradually to change the nature of the courts of law, and to undermine the trial by jury, by introducing questions too complicated for a decision in that mode."

Imagine, being how complicated many of our civil case laws are, a jury taking control of these cases.  It would be nearly impossible as the people would need to research the law most of the time and probably wouldn't be able to completely comprehend it anyways.  It seems this is already done just so the populace won't understand what the laws are and we don't even use trial by jury for these laws.

"I answer that it is not very probable the other States would entertain the same opinion of our institutions as we do ourselves."

This type of attitude is needed all over the place in our federal government.  Education for example is pretty much universal because the feds give major guidelines on what schools must do.  If we allowed each state to independently run schools, we may see some competition.  A voucher program would work even better, but independent schools of each state would be a start.  Each state is different and our federal government needs to allow the states to make their own decisions instead of making up their minds for them.  I also hear Obama is not allowing Governors to refuse the federal money.  Why would he do such a thing when the money he is forcing at them is only going towards wasteful spending?  We are a federal government, not a national government.

"I suspect it to be impossible in the nature of the thing to fix the salutary point at which the operation of the institution ought to stop, and this is with me a strong argument for leaving the matter to the discretion of the legislature."

The founders knew that things would change and leaving things as open as possible would never allow the Constitution to be dated.  For this reason I find those laws that are explicitly set in place to never be dated as well.  The bill of rights will never go out of date.  The rest of the Constitution will never go out of date.  Why can people not understand that they constructed this document in such a way that it will never go out of date! 

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" Edmund Burke