Civil Jury: the Supreme Court's Assault on the Seventh Amendment

The decision of the Supreme Court in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission 1 has seriously weakened the protection afforded by the seventh amendment to the United States Constitution.2 In Atlas the Court considered the constitudonality of the enforcement procedure established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).3 This was the first time the Court had considered a seventh amendment challenge to recent statutes in which Congress has expanded the role of administrative agencies in the enforcement of federal regulatory statutes. 4 The Court's conclusion that the OSHA procedure is not forbidden by the seventh amendment constitutes a first round of approval for this expansion. The OSHA procedure gives an administrative agency more power than has been given to agencies enforcing most older federal regulatory programs. Violations of the Act are not criminal offenses, and the only sanction is a civil money penalty. Civil money penalties have been used in other regulatory statutes,5 but OSHA pro-