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Page Number: 58

26 

SEC v. JARKESY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

until well into the 1970s, noting, for example, that “the ap-
plicability of the constitutional right to jury trial in actions
enforcing statutory rights” was “a matter too obvious to be 
doubted.”  Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 193 (1974) (in-
ternal quotation marks omitted); accord, Pernell v. Southall 
Realty, 416 U. S. 363, 375 (1974) (the Seventh “Amendment 
requires  trial  by  jury  in  actions  unheard  of  at  common 
law”).  And  the  Court  rejected  the  notion  that  a  statute 
must present “a close equivalent” to a common-law cause of
action; the jury-trial right attached, we said, so long as the 
“action involve[d] rights and remedies of the sort tradition-
ally enforced in an action at law.”  Ibid.
  Atlas Roofing ignored all of that.  Instead, it suggested, 
“[t]he phrase ‘Suits at common law’ has been construed to 
refer  to  cases  tried  prior  to  the  adoption  of  the  Seventh
Amendment in courts of law.”  430 U. S., at 449 (emphasis 
added).  That cramped construction of the Seventh Amend-
ment was, of course, a key move in Atlas Roofing.  For with-
out it, the Court would have been hard pressed to suggest 
the  public  rights  doctrine  permits  Congress  to  route  any
“ ‘new  cause  of  action’ ”  for  adjudication  before  agencies
where juries do not sit.  Post, at 14 (quoting Atlas Roofing, 
430 U. S., at 461).

Almost  immediately,  however,  the  Court  rejected  Atlas 
Roofing’s analysis, not just with respect to public rights doc-
trine but the Seventh Amendment, too.  Returning to our
mainstream precedents, the Court reaffirmed the applica-
bility of the Seventh Amendment to new causes of action, 
first in Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412 (1987), and then 
in Granfinanciera.  See ante, at 8–9.  And by 1990, our case 
law had come full circle, announcing once again what has 
always been true:  that “[t]he right to a jury trial includes
more  than  the  common-law  forms  of  action  recognized  in
1791.”  Teamsters v. Terry, 494 U. S. 558, 564. 

Today, the Court respects and follows this longstanding