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The Dissent of the Minority of the Pennsylvania Convention, Pennsylvania Packet (December 18, 1787)
https://histcsac.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/281/2017/07/Dissent_of_the_Minority_of_the_Pennsylvania_Convention.pdf
"That this mode of proceeding is the one which must be adopted under this constitution, is evident from the following circumstances:
1st. That the trial by jury, which is the grand characteristic of the common law, is secured by the constitution, only in criminal cases.
2d. That the appeal from both law and fact is expressly established, which is utterly inconsistent with the principles of the common law, and trials by jury. The only mode in which an appeal from law and fact can be established, is, by adopting the principles and practice of the civil law; unless the United States should be drawn into the absurdity of calling and swearing juries, merely for the purpose of contradicting their verdicts, which would render juries contemptible and worse than useless.
3d. That the courts to be established would decide on all cases of law and equity, which is a well known characteristic of the civil law, and these courts would have cognizance not only of the laws of the United States and of treaties, and of cases affecting ambassadors, but of all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, which last are matters belonging exclusively to the civil law, in every nation in Christendom."
https://www.consource.org/document/the-dissent-of-the-minority-of-the-pennsylvania-convention-pennsylvania-packet-1787-12-18/
"Trial by jury in criminal cases may also be excluded by declaring that the libeller for instance shall be liable to an action of debt for a specified sum; thus evading the common law prosecution by indictment and trial by jury. And the common course of proceeding against a ship for breach of revenue laws by information (which will be classed among civil causes) will at the civil law be within the resort of a court, where no jury intervenes. Besides, the benefit of jury trial, in cases of a criminal nature, which cannot be evaded, will be rendered of little value, by calling the accused to answer far from home; there being no provision that the trial be by a jury of the neighbourhood country."
“The principles that judicial tribunals should conduct open, public proceedings and give redress to every person who has suffered a legal injury are two of the linchpins of AngloAmerican law. Other basic precepts require that notice and hearing precede such hearings, and that tribunals be impartial. Together, this modest bundle of principles—in large part procedural—defines what people think of as the vital core of our legal system. Everything else flows from them.”
COURTS TO BE OPEN; SUITS AGAINST THE COMMONWEALTH
BY Donals Marritz
https://www.pabar.org/public/committees/lspublic/atj/Chapter14-final.pdf
Evidence:
“By the late sixteenth century, and especially with the accession of the Stuarts, the court of chancery was closely associated with the royal prerogative and became the target of opposition. Equity was therefore disadvantageously contrasted with common law in an era when “ancient law” took on revolutionary constitutional overtones. The struggle between the two systems of law became explicit in Glandville’s case, the 1616 litigation, jurisdiction over which sought by Chancellor Ellsmere, who enjoined suitors from proceeding at law, and by Chief Justice Coke, who prohibited the same litigants from proceeding in equity, and in which James I finally intervened on the side of chancery. The common lawyers of the early Stuart period strongly objected to the prerogative character of equital law, but they also attacked particular abuses: the use of chancery jobs as royal patronage, the delay and expense of chancery proceedings, and the increasing formalism of equity litigation. At bottom, of course, they anticipated Selden, who sneered that “Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is equity. ‘Tis all one as if they should make the standard for measure a Chancellor’s foot.””
Source: Perspectives in American History, Law in American History, Fleming and Bailyn
https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21199443?selectedversion=NBD59380