The Supreme Court will consider next week whether the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) use of in-house judges violates the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment.
Congress empowered the SEC to use its own in-house administrative law judges (ALJs) to try cases brought by agency enforcement when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act following the 2008 financial crisis. George R. Jarkesy, who has been caught in the SEC’s administrative proceedings since the agency charged him with fraud relating to his investment activities in 2013, challenged that grant of power as unconstitutional.
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