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The Seventh Amendment serves to ensure that civil litigants are entitled to jury trials, much as the Sixth Amendment gives criminal defendants the right to be tried by a jury of peers. The amendment originated when it was noted near the end of the Constitutional Convention that no provision had yet been made for juries in civil cases. An attempt to add the provision was defeated, but the guarantee to the right of a jury in civil cases was one of the amendments urged on Congress by the ratifying conventions. The Seventh Amendment was finally passed without debate.
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