FCC v. AT&T · ¶31

The Seventh Amendment “preserve[s]” the right to trial by jury in “Suits at common law.” It applies in all proceedings, whatever their “peculiar form,” in which “legal rights” are to be “settle[d].” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 447 (1830). It does not, however, “prescribe at what stage” of a legal dispute “a trial by jury must, if demanded, be had.” Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U. S. 1, 23 (1899). The Amendment requires only that, before legal rights and obligations are conclusively “ascertained and determined,” Par sons, 3 Pet., at 447, a party has the chance to insist that a jury make the “ultimate determination of issues of fact,” Ex parte Peterson, 253 U. S. 300, 310 (1920).

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