Bloom v. Illinois/Concurrence Fortas

by Abe Fortas

United States Supreme Court

391 U.S. 194

Bloom  v.  Illinois

 Argued: Jan. 16, 17, 1968. --- Decided: May 20, 1968

Mr. JUSTICE FORTAS, concurring.

I join the judgments and opinions of the Court in these cases because I agree that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the States accord the right to jury trial in prosecutions for offenses that are not petty. A powerful reason for reaching this conclusion is that the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to jury trial in federal prosecutions for such offenses. It is, of course, logical and reasonable that in seeking, from time to time, the content of "due process of law," we should look to and be guided by the great Bill of Rights in our Constitution. Considerations of the practice of the forum States, of the States generally, and of the history and office of jury trials are also relevant to our task. I believe, as my Brother White's opinion for the Court in Duncan v. Louisiana persuasively argues, that the right to jury trial in major prosecutions, state as well as federal, is so fundamental to the protection of justice and liberty that "due process of law" cannot be accorded without it.

It is the progression of history, and especially the deepening realization of the substance and procedures that justice and the demands of human dignity require, which has caused this Court to invest the command of "due process of law" with increasingly greater substance. The majority lists outstanding stations in this progression, ante, at 147-148. This Court has not been alone in its progressive recognition of the content of the great phrase which my Brother WHITE describes as "spacious language" and Learned Hand called a "majestic generality." The Congress, state courts, and state legislatures have moved forward with the advancing conception of human rights in according procedural as well as substantive rights to individuals accused of conflict with the criminal laws.

But although I agree with the decision of the Court, I cannot agree with the implication, see ante, at 158-159, n. 30, that the tail must go with the hide: that when we hold, influenced by the Sixth Amendment, that "due process" requires that the States accord the right of jury trial for all but petty offenses, we automatically import all of the ancillary rules which have been or may hereafter be developed incidental to the right to jury trial in the federal courts. I see no reason whatever, for example, to assume that our decision today should require us to impose federal requirements such as unanimous verdicts or a jury of 12 upon the States. We may well conclude that these and other features of federal jury practice are by no means fundamental — that they are not essential to due process of law — and that they are not obligatory on the States.

I would then make these points clear today. Neither logic nor history nor the intent of the draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment can possibly be said to require that the Sixth Amendment or its jury trial provision be applied to the States together with the total gloss that this Court's decisions have supplied. The draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment intended what they said, not more or less; that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It is ultimately the duty of this Court to interpret, to ascribe specific meaning to this phrase. There is no reason whatever for us to conclude that, in so doing, we are bound slavishly to follow not only the Sixth Amendment but all of its bag and baggage, however securely or insecurely affixed they may be by law and precedent to federal proceedings. To take this course, in my judgment, would be not only unnecessary but mischievous because it would inflict a serious blow upon the principle of federalism. The Due Process Clause commands us to apply its great standard to state court proceedings to assure basic fairness. It does not command us rigidly and arbitrarily to impose the exact pattern of federal proceedings upon the 50 States. On the contrary, the Constitution's command, in my view, is that in our insistence upon state observance of due process, we should, so far as possible, allow the greatest latitude for state differences. It requires, within the limits of the lofty basic standards that it prescribes for the States as well as the Federal Government, maximum opportunity for diversity and minimal imposition of uniformity of method and detail upon the States. Our Constitution sets up a federal union, not a monolith.

This Court has heretofore held that various provisions of the Bill of Rights such as the freedom of speech and religion guarantees of the First Amendment, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment, the privilege against self-incrimination of the Fifth Amendment, and the right to counsel and to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment "are all to be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment." Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 10 (1964); Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 406 (1965); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 464 (1966). I need not quarrel with the specific conclusion in those specific instances. But unless one adheres slavishly to the incorporation theory, body and substance, the same conclusion need not be superimposed upon the jury trial right. I respectfully but urgently suggest that it should not be. Jury trial is more than a principle of justice applicable to individual cases. It is s system of administration of the business of the State. While we may believe (and I do believe) that the right of jury trial is fundamental, it does not follow that the particulars of according that right must be uniform. We should be ready to welcome state variations which do not impair — indeed, which may advance — the theory and purpose of trial by jury.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice STEWART joins, dissenting.

I dissent for the reasons expressed in my dissenting opinion in Duncan v. State of Louisiana, 391 U.S. 171, 88 S.Ct. 1460, 20 L.Ed.2d 491, and in my separate opinion in Cheff v. Schnackenberg, 384 U.S. 373, 380, 86 S.Ct. 1523, 1526, 16 L.Ed.2d 629. See also United States v. Barnett, 376 U.S. 681, 84 S.Ct. 984, 12 L.Ed.2d 23; Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165, 78 S.Ct. 632, 2 L.Ed.2d 672.

This case completes a remarkable circle. In Duncan, supra, the Court imposed on the States a rule of procedure that was neither shown to be fundamental to procedural fairness nor held to be part of the originally understood content of the Fourteenth Amendment. The sole justification was that the rule was found in the Bill of Rights. The Court now, without stating any additional reasons, imposes on the States a related rule that, as recently as Cheff v. Schnackenberg, supra, the Court declined to find in the Bill of Rights. That the words of Mr. Justice Holmes, inveighing against a century of 'unconstitutional assumption of (state) powers by the Courts of the United States' in derogation of the central premise of our Constitution, should be invoked to support the Court's action here can only be put down to the vagaries of the times.

Notes