Supreme Court Could Restore 12-Person Jury Standard in Parada Case

The Supreme Court is poised in the coming weeks to decide whether to hear Parada v. United States, a case that asks the justices to reinstate the traditional 12-person jury as the standard for criminal trials. The case, docket No. 25-166, centers on a long-running question about jury size in American courts and could reshape practice at both the federal and state levels if the court grants review.

For much of U.S. history, a 12-member jury signaled a robust and representative community deliberation. The 12-juror standard is rooted in English common law, carried to the American colonies, and treated as a constitutional benchmark. In 1970, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not fix a single number of jurors and that trial courts may empanel fewer jurors if needed. The court said it found no clear record from the Constitutional Convention indicating the founders cared about the exact size of juries. Since then, historians have gathered archival material suggesting a different reading of the founding era: the number mattered, and in many periods it signaled the dignity of a constitutional trial.

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Scholars point to the slave-era courts that operated in the Carolinas as stark evidence that the founders did not view jury size as a trivial detail. Beginning in the late 1690s, the so-called slave courts operated outside the protections later enshrined in the Bill of Rights and could adjudicate criminal charges against enslaved people with as few as three or five jurors, never reaching a 12-member panel. Court records from those jurisdictions describe such verdicts as not constituting a true jury trial in any sense, with the practice reflecting status rather than a community’s constitutional rights. In this era, penalties could be severe and, when capital cases were pursued, taxpayers were asked to compensate slaveowners for the loss of their “property.” Some slave owners pursued capital charges against enslaved people precisely to secure the harsher penalties tolerated by slave law.

A pivotal moment cited in the historical revival is an 1844 South Carolina case involving an enslaved woman named Emma. The owner argued that while Emma herself could be tried by five jurors, his rights as a property holder could not be forfeited without a verdict by 12 jurors. The South Carolina appellate court rejected that logic, stating that a five-person jury is not a jury at all and contradicts the due course of law. The ruling underscored the broader point: the number of jurors was not a mere procedural detail but a definitional element of what constitutes a jury.

The story also travels to the Revolutionary War era in New Jersey. Amid wartime distractions and amid fears of traitors aiding the British, the legislature allowed six-person juries to try accused traitors, but the state supreme court struck that provision down as unconstitutional under the 1776 state constitution. Chief Justice David Brearley, who would later help shape the federal constitutional framework, explained that even in times of extraordinary risk, the dignity of a 12-person jury remained a standard worth preserving.

When Americans debated the Constitution at their state ratifying conventions, the 12-juror requirement was treated as a given rather than a choice. In Virginia, for example, Governor Edmund Randolph—who had participated in the drafting of the Constitution—defended the document by arguing there was no reason to doubt that fewer than 12 jurors would be deemed sufficient. Contemporary authorities that circulated widely at the time reinforced the point: legal dictionaries defined verdict as the agreement of all 12 jurors, and authorities such as Blackstone and Hale provided doctrinal guidance that implied the necessity of twelve or more to render a valid verdict. The consensus of the era linked the concept of a jury to the presence of 12 voices agreeing on the decision.

Today, Parada v. United States has prompted historians and legal scholars to revisit those primary sources. Wanling Su, an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington, has co-authored a North Carolina Law Review article with Georgetown Research Fellow Rahul Goravara arguing that the founding generation treated jury size as a constitutional issue, not merely a procedural preference. Su has also filed an amicus brief in Parada urging the Court to require 12-person juries again, signaling a return to what some historians see as the original meaning of the jury right.

Legal observers say a grant of review in Parada would amount to a direct challenge to how the jury right has been interpreted for half a century. Proponents of restoring the 12-member standard argue that the size fosters broader community representation, reduces the risk of error or bias in verdicts, and serves as a check on prosecutorial and judicial power. Opponents contend that the 1970 decision reflected a deliberate recalibration to accommodate modern trial administration and that a fixed numeric requirement may be less essential than the quality of deliberation and juror service.

The court’s decision could reverberate beyond a single case. If the Court agrees to hear Parada, it would raise questions about whether any state or federal court may reduce juror sizes in criminal trials and could prompt reconsideration of longstanding practices that differ from the 12-person standard. The discourse has already drawn attention to historical dictionaries and treatises that shaped the founding generation’s understanding of jury composition, framing the issue as a fundamental question about due process and communal sovereignty. The Court is expected to act in the coming weeks, with significant implications for defendants, prosecutors, and the administration of justice across the country.

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