By limiting the jury's constitutionally prescribed role to "the factual components of the essential elements" the Government surely does not mean to concede that the jury must pass upon all elements that contain some factual component, for that test is amply met here. Deciding whether a statement is "material" requires the determination of at least two subsidiary questions of purely historical fact: (a) "what statement was made?"; and (b) "what decision was the agency trying to make?". The ultimate question: (c) "whether the statement was material to the decision," requires applying the legal standard of materiality (quoted above) to these historical facts. What the Government apparently argues is that the Constitution requires only that (a) and (b) be determined by the jury, and that (c) may be determined by the judge. We see two difficulties with this. First, the application of legal standard to fact sort of question posed by (c), commonly called a "mixed question of law and fact," has typically been resolved by juries. See J. Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at Common Law 194, 249-250 (1898). Indeed, our cases have recognized in other contexts that the materiality inquiry, involving as it does "delicate assessments of the inferences a `reasonable [decisionmaker]' would draw from a given set of facts and the significance of those inferences to him . . . [is] peculiarly on[e] for the trier of fact." TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U.S. 438, 450 (1976) (securities fraud); McLanahan v. Universal Ins. Co., 1 Pet. 170, 188-189, 191 (1828) (materiality of false statements in insurance applications).

The second difficulty with the Government's position is that it has absolutely no historical support. If it were true, the law books would be full of cases, regarding materiality and innumerable other "mixed law and fact" issues, in which the criminal jury was required to come forth with "findings of fact" pertaining to each of the essential elements, leaving it to the judge to apply the law to those facts and render the ultimate verdict of "guilty" or "not guilty." We know of no such case. Juries at the time of the framing could not be forced to produce mere "factual findings," but were entitled to deliver a general verdict pronouncing the defendant's guilt or innocence. Morgan, A Brief History of Special Verdicts and Special Interrogatories, 32 Yale L. J. 575, 591 (1922). See also G. Clementson, Special Verdicts and Special Findings by Juries 49 (1905); Alschuler & Deiss, A Brief History of the Criminal Jury in the United States, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 867, 912-913 (1994). Justice Chase's defense to one of the charges in his 1805 impeachment trial was that "he well knows that it is the right of juries in criminal cases, to give a general verdict of acquittal, which cannot be set aside on account of its being contrary to law, and that hence results the power of juries, to decide on the law as well as on the facts, in all criminal cases. This power he holds to be a sacred part of our legal privileges . . . ." 1 S. Smith & T. Lloyd, Trial of Samuel Chase 34 (1805).
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The more modern authorities the Government cites also do not support its concept of the criminal jury as mere factfinder. Although each contains language discussing the jury's role as factfinder, see Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. ___ (1993); County Court of Ulster Cty. v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 156 (1979); Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 206 (1977); In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 (1970), each also confirms that the jury's constitutional responsibility is not merely to determine the facts, but to apply the law to those facts and draw the ultimate conclusion of guilt or innocence. The point is put with unmistakable clarity in Allen, which involved the constitutionality of statutory inferences and presumptions. Such devices, Allen said, can help

"the trier of fact to determine the existence of an element of the crime--that is, an `ultimate' or `elemental' fact--from the existence of one or more `evidentiary' or `basic' facts . . . . Nonetheless, in criminal cases, the ultimate test of any device's constitutional validity in a given case remains constant: the device must not undermine the factfinder's responsibility at trial, based on evidence adduced by the State, to find the ultimate facts beyond a reasonable doubt." Allen, supra, at 156.

See also Sullivan, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2) ("The right [to jury trial] includes, of course, as its most important element, the right to have the jury, rather than the judge, reach the requisite finding of `guilty' "); Patterson, supra, at 204; Winship, supra, at 361, 363.

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