Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/494/558
Timestamp: 2013-05-25 23:10:56
Document Index: 364667900

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 1452', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 1', '§ 192', '§ 8', 'art, 3', '§ 183', '§ 183', '§ 8', '§ 92', '§ 301', '§ 10', '§ 301']

CHAUFFEURS, TEAMSTERS AND HELPERS, LOCAL NO. 391, Petitioner v. Thomas C. TERRY, et al. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
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494 U.S. 558 (110 S.Ct. 1339, 108 L.Ed.2d 519)
[HTML] dissent, KENNEDY, O'CONNOR, SCALIA
[HTML] Syllabus McLean Trucking Company and petitioner Chauffeurs, Teamsters and Helpers Local No. 391 (Union) were parties to a collective-bargaining agreement which covered respondent employees. When the Union declined to refer to the grievance committee respondents' charges against McLeanarising from McLean's layoff and recall policieson the ground that the relevant issues had been determined in two prior proceedings concerning complaints that the Union had referred to the committee on respondents' behalf, respondents filed suit in the District Court. Alleging that McLean had breached the collective-bargaining agreement in violation of § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, and that the Union had violated its duty of fair representation, they requested injunctive relief and, inter alia, compensatory damages for lost wages and health benefits. They also made a jury demand for all issues triable by a jury. After McLean filed for bankruptcy, the action against it, and all claims for injunctive relief, were dismissed. The Union then moved to strike the jury demand on the ground that no right to a jury trial exists in a duty of fair representation suit. The District Court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the Seventh Amendment entitled respondents to a jury trial on their claim for monetary relief.
(b) The remedy respondents seek entitles them to a jury trial on all issues presented in the suit. That remedycompensatory damagesis traditionally legal relief and has none of the attributes that must be present before this Court will characterize money damages as equitable. The relief is not restitutionary, because the backpay sought is not money wrongfully held by the Union, but wages and benefits respondents would have received from McLean had the Union processed their grievances properly. Nor is the monetary award incidental to, or intertwined with, injunctive relief, because respondents here are seeking only money damages. Moreover, although backpay under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is considered an equitable remedy, this characterization does not require that money damages for breach of the duty of fair representation be considered equitable as well. Congress has specifically characterized Title VII backpay as a form of "equitable relief," but it has made no similar pronouncement regarding damages for breach of the duty of fair representation. Further, this Court has noted that Title VII backpay sought from an employer would generally be restitutionary in nature. Pp. 570-574.
2. A comparison of respondents' action to 18th-century causes of action leaves the jury trial question in equipoise, because it reveals that this action presents both equitable and legal issues. The duty of fair representation claim is comparable to an equitable action by a trust beneficiary against a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty. DelCostello, suprawhich, in determining the appropriate statute of limitations in a hybrid action, noted in dicta that an attorney malpractice action, historically an action at law, is the closest state-law analogy to a duty of fair representation claimdid not consider the trust analogy, which more fully captures the relationship between the Union and the represented employees. Nevertheless, respondents' action cannot be characterized as wholly equitable, since the § 301 issuewhich respondents must prove in order to prevailis comparable to a breach of contract claim, a legal issue. United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 67 L.Ed.2d 732. Pp. 565-570.
In July 1983, respondents filed an action in District Court, alleging that McLean had breached the collective-bargaining agreement in violation of § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. 185 (1982 ed.),
and that the Union had violated its duty of fair representation. Respondents requested a permanent injunction requiring the defendants to cease their illegal acts and to reinstate them to their proper seniority status; in addition, they sought, inter alia, compensatory damages for lost wages and health benefits. In 1986 McLean filed for bankruptcy; subsequently, the action against it was voluntarily dismissed, along with all claims for injunctive relief.
491 U.S. 903, 109 S.Ct. 3183, 105 L.Ed.2d 692 (1989), and now affirm the judgment of the Fourth Circuit.
The duty of fair representation is inferred from unions' exclusive authority under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C. 159(a) (1982 ed.), to represent all employees in a bargaining unit. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 177, 87 S.Ct. 903, 909-910, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967). The duty requires a union "to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct." Ibid. A union must discharge its duty both in bargaining with the employer and in its enforcement of the resulting collective-bargaining agreement. Ibid. Thus, the Union here was required to pursue respondents' grievances in a manner consistent with the principles of fair representation.
We turn now to the constitutional issue presented in this casewhether respondents are entitled to a jury trial.
The Seventh Amendment provides that "in Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved." The right to a jury trial includes more than the common-law forms of action recognized in 1791; the phrase "Suits at common law" refers to "suits in which legal rights are to be ascertained and determined, in contradistinction to those where equitable rights alone are recognized, and equitable remedies are administered." Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 447, 7 L.Ed. 732 (1830); see also ibid. ("The amendment then may well be construed to embrace all suits which are not of equity and admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the peculiar form which they may assume to settle legal rights"). The right extends to causes of action created by Congress. Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 417, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 1835, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987). Since the merger of the systems of law and equity, see Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 2, this Court has carefully preserved the right to trial by jury where legal rights are at stake. As the Court noted in Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 501, 79 S.Ct. 948, 952, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959), " 'Maintenance of the jury as a fact-finding body is of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right to a jury trial should be scrutinized with the utmost care' " (quoting Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U.S. 474, 486, 55 S.Ct. 296, 301, 79 L.Ed. 603 (1935)).
To determine whether a particular action will resolve legal rights, we examine both the nature of the issues involved and the remedy sought. "First, we compare the statutory action to 18th-century actions brought in the courts of England prior to the merger of the courts of law and equity. Second, we examine the remedy sought and determine whether it is legal or equitable in nature." Tull, supra, 481 U.S., at 417-418, 107 S.Ct., at 1835-1836 (citations omitted). The second inquiry is the more important in our analysis. Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg, 492 U.S. 33, 42, 109 S.Ct. 2782, 2790, 106 L.Ed.2d 26 (1989).
The Union contends that this duty of fair representation action resembles a suit brought to vacate an arbitration award because respondents seek to set aside the result of the grievance process. In the 18th century, an action to set aside an arbitration award was considered equitable. 2 J. Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence § 1452, pp. 789-790 (13th ed. 1886) (equity courts had jurisdiction over claims that an award should be set aside on the ground of "mistake of the arbitrators"); see, e.g., Burchell v. Marsh, 17 How. 344, 15 L.Ed. 96 (1855) (reviewing bill in equity to vacate an arbitration award). In support of its characterization of the duty of fair representation claim, the Union cites United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 67 L.Ed.2d 732 (1981), in which we held that, for purposes of selecting from various state statutes an appropriate limitations period for a § 301 suit against an employer, such a suit was more analogous to a suit to vacate an arbitration award than to a breach of contract action. Id., at 62, 101 S.Ct., at 1563.
The arbitration analogy is inapposite, however, to the Seventh Amendment question posed in this case. No grievance committee has considered respondents' claim that the Union violated its duty of fair representation; the grievance process was concerned only with the employer's alleged breach of the collective-bargaining agreement. Thus, respondents' claim against the Union cannot be characterized as an action to vacate an arbitration award because " 'the arbitration proceeding did not, and indeed, could not, resolve the employee's claim against the union. . . . Because no arbitrator has decided the primary issue presented by this claim, no arbitration award need be undone, even if the employee ultimately prevails.' " DelCostello, 462 U.S., at 167, 103 S.Ct., at 2292 (quoting Mitchell, supra, 451 U.S., at 73, 101 S.Ct., at 1569 (STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (footnotes omitted)).
Nevertheless, the trust analogy does not persuade us to characterize respondents' claim as wholly equitable. The Union's argument mischaracterizes the nature of our comparison of the action before us to 18th-century forms of action. As we observed in Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970), "The Seventh Amendment question depends on the nature of the issue to be tried rather than the character of the overall action." Id., at 538, 90 S.Ct., at 738 (emphasis added) (finding a right to jury trial in a shareholder's derivative suit, a type of suit traditionally brought in courts of equity, because plaintiffs' case presented legal issues of breach of contract and negligence). As discussed above, see supra, at 564, to recover from the Union here, respondents must prove both that McLean violated § 301 by breaching the collective-bargaining agreement and that the Union breached its duty of fair representation.
When viewed in isolation, the duty of fair representation issue is analogous to a claim against a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty. The § 301 issue, how ever, is comparable to a breach of contract claima legal issue.
First, we have characterized damages as equitable where they are restitutionary, such as in "actions for disgorgement of improper profits," Tull, 481 U.S., at 424, 107 S.Ct., at 1839. See also Curtis v. Loether, supra, 415 U.S., at 197, 94 S.Ct., at 1010; Porter v. Warner Holding Co., 328 U.S. 395, 402, 66 S.Ct. 1086, 1091, 90 L.Ed. 1332 (1946). The backpay sought by respondents is not money wrongfully held by the Union, but wages and benefits they would have received from McLean had the Union processed the employees' grievances properly. Such relief is not restitutionary.
Second, a monetary award "incidental to or intertwined with injunctive relief" may be equitable. Tull, supra, 481 U.S., at 424, 107 S.Ct., at 1839. See, e.g., Mitchell v. Robert DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U.S. 288, 291-292, 80 S.Ct. 332, 334-335, 4 L.Ed.2d 323 (1960) (District Court had power, incident to its injunctive powers, to award backpay under the Fair Labor Standards Act; also backpay in that case was restitutionary). Because respondents seek only money damages, this characteristic is clearly absent from the case.
The Union argues that the backpay relief sought here must nonetheless be considered equitable because this Court has labeled backpay awarded under Title VII, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq. (1982 ed.), as equitable. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 415-418, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 2370-2372, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975) (characterizing backpay awarded against employer under Title VII as equitable in context of assessing whether judge erred in refusing to award such relief). It contends that the Title VII analogy is compelling in the context of the duty of fair representation because the Title VII backpay provision was based on the NLRA provision governing backpay awards for unfair labor practices, 29 U.S.C. 160(c) (1982 ed.) ("Where an order directs reinstatement of an employee, back pay may be required of the employer or labor organization"). See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, supra, at 419, 95 S.Ct., at 2372. We are not convinced.
The Court has never held that a plaintiff seeking backpay under Title VII has a right to a jury trial. See Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 581-582, 98 S.Ct. 866, 870-871, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978). Assuming, without deciding, that such a Title VII plaintiff has no right to a jury trial, the Union's argument does not persuade us that respondents are not entitled to a jury trial here. Congress specifically characterized backpay under Title VII as a form of "equitable relief." 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(g) (1982 ed.) ("The court may . . . order such affirmative action as may be appropriate, which may include, but is not limited to, reinstatement or hiring of employees, with or without back pay . . ., or any other equitable relief as the court deems appropriate"). See also Curtis v. Loether, supra, 415 U.S., at 196-197, 94 S.Ct., at 1009-1010 (distinguishing backpay under Title VII from damages under Title VIII, the fair housing provision of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619 (1982 ed.), which the Court characterized as "legal" for Seventh Amendment purposes). Congress made no similar pronouncement regarding the duty of fair representation. Furthermore, the Court has noted that backpay sought from an employer under Title VII would generally be restitutionary in nature, see Curtis v. Loether, supra, at 197, 94 S.Ct., at 1010, in contrast to the damages sought here from the Union. Thus, the remedy sought in this duty of fair representation case is clearly different from backpay sought for violations of Title VII.
I agree with the Court that respondents seek a remedy that is legal in nature and that the Seventh Amendment entitles respondents to a jury trial on their duty of fair representation claims. I therefore join Parts I, II, III-B, and IV of the Court's opinion. I do not join that part of the opinion which reprises the particular historical analysis this Court has employed to determine whether a claim is a "Suit at common law" under the Seventh Amendment, ante, at 564, because I believe the historical test can and should be simplified.
The current test, first expounded in Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 194, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 1008, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974), requires a court to compare the right at issue to 18th-century English forms of action to determine whether the historically analogous right was vindicated in an action at law or in equity, and to examine whether the remedy sought is legal or equitable in nature. However, this Court, in expounding the test, has repeatedly discounted the significance of the analogous form of action for deciding where the Seventh Amendment applies. I think it is time we dispense with it altogether.
I would decide Seventh Amendment questions on the basis of the relief sought. If the relief is legal in nature, i.e., if it is the kind of relief that historically was available from courts of law, I would hold that the parties have a constitutional right to a trial by jury unless Congress has permissibly delegated the particular dispute to a non-Article III decisionmaker and jury trials would frustrate Congress' purposes in enacting a particular statutory scheme.
I believe that our insistence that the jury trial right hinges in part on a comparison of the substantive right at issue to forms of action used in English courts 200 years ago needlessly convolutes our Seventh Amendment jurisprudence. For the past decade and a half, this Court has explained that the two parts of the historical test are not equal in weight, that the nature of the remedy is more important than the nature of the right. See ante at 565; Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg, 492 U.S. 33, 42, 109 S.Ct. 2782, 2790, 106 L.Ed.2d 26 (1989); Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 421, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 1837, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987); Curtis v. Loether, supra, 415 U.S., at 196, 94 S.Ct., at 1009. Since the existence of a right to jury trial therefore turns on the nature of the remedy, absent congressional delegation to a specialized decisionmaker,
there remains little purpose to our rattling through dusty attics of ancient writs. The time has come to borrow William of Occam's razor and sever this portion of our analysis.
We have long acknowledged that, of the factors relevant to the jury trial right, comparison of the claim to ancient forms of action, "requiring extensive and possibly abstruse historical inquiry, is obviously the most difficult to apply." Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 538, n. 10, 90 S.Ct. 733, 738, n. 10, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970). Requiring judges, with neither the training nor time necessary for reputable historical scholarship, to root through the tangle of primary and secondary sources to determine which of a hundred or so writs is analogous to the right at issue has embroiled courts in recondite controversies better left to legal historians. For example, in Granfinanciera, S.A., supra, decided last Term, both Justice WHITE, in dissent, and I, writing for the Court, struggled with the question whether an equity court would have heard the suit that was comparable to the modern statutory action at issue. I quoted Professor Garrard Glenn. Id., at 44, 109 S.Ct., at 2791. Justice WHITE countered that "other scholars have looked at the same history and come to a different conclusion. Still others have questioned the soundness of the distinction that Professor Glenn drew. . . . Trying to read the ambiguous history concerning fraudulent conveyance actions in equity . . . has perplexed jurists in each era, who have come to conflicting decisions each time that the question has found relevance." Id., at 85, 109 S.Ct., at 2813 (footnote omitted). I countered with an item-by-item evaluation of Justice WHITE's sources. See id., at 47, n. 6, 109 S.Ct., at 2793, n. 6.
To be sure, it is neither unusual nor embarrassing for members of a court to disagree and disagree vehemently. But it better behooves judges to disagree within the province of judicial expertise. Furthermore, inquiries into the appropriate historical analogs for the rights at issue are not necessarily susceptible of sound resolution under the best of circumstances. As one scholar observes: "The line between law and equity (and therefore between jury and non-jury trial) was not a fixed and static one. There was a continual process of borrowing by one jurisdiction from the other; there were less frequent instances of a sloughing off of older functions. . . . The borrowing by each jurisdiction from the other was not accompanied by an equivalent sloughing off of functions. This led to a very large overlap between law and equity." James, Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Actions, 72 Yale L.J. 655, 658-659 (1963).
The right at issue here, for example, is a creature of modern labor law quite foreign to Georgian England. See ante, at 565-566, Justice Stewart recognized the perplexities involved in this task in his dissent in Ross v. Bernhard, supra, 396 U.S., at 550, 90 S.Ct., at 744, albeit drawing a different conclusion. "The fact is," he said, "that there are, for the most part, no such things as inherently 'legal issues' or inherently 'equitable issues.' There are only factual issues, and, 'like chameleons they take their color from surrounding circumstances.' Thus, the Court's 'nature of the issue' approach is hardly meaningful."
To rest the historical test required by the Seventh Amendment solely on the nature of the relief sought would not, of course, offer the federal courts a rule that is in all cases self-executing. Courts will still be required to ask which remedies were traditionally available at law and which only in equity. But this inquiry involves fewer variables and simpler choices, on the whole, and is far more manageable than the scholasticist debates in which we have been engaged. Moreover, the rule I propose would remain true to the Seventh Amendment, as it is undisputed that, historically, "jurisdictional lines between law and equity were primarily a matter of remedy." McCoid, Procedural Reform and the Right to Jury Trial: A Study of Beacon Theaters, Inc. v. Westover, 116 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1 (1967). See also Redish, Seventh Amendment Right to Jury Trial: A Study in the Irrationality of Rational Decision Making, 70 Nw.U.L.Rev. 486, 490 (1975) ("In the majority of cases at common law, the equitable or legal nature of a suit was determined not by the substantive nature of the cause of action but by the remedy sought").
This is not to say that the resulting division between claims entitled to jury trials and claims not so entitled would exactly mirror the division between law and equity in England in 1791. But it is too late in the day for this Court to profess that the Seventh Amendment preserves the right to jury trial only in cases that would have been heard in the British law courts of the 18th century. See, e.g., Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S., at 193, 94 S.Ct., at 1007 ("Although the thrust of the Amendment was to preserve the right to jury trial as it existed in 1791, it has long been settled that the right extends beyond the common-law forms of action recognized at that time"); Beacon Theaters, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 79 S.Ct. 948, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959) (rejecting the relevance of the chancellor's historic ability to decide legal claims incidental to a case brought in equity and holding that, in mixed cases, the parties are not only entitled to a jury trial on the legal claims but that this jury trial must precede a decision on the equitable claimswith the attendant collateral-estoppel effects); Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970) (requiring a jury trial on the legal issues in a shareholders' derivative suit even though the procedurally equivalent suit in the 18th century would have been heard only in equity).
What Blackstone described as "the glory of the English law" and "the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy," 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *379, was crucial in the eyes of those who founded this country. The encroachment on civil jury trial by colonial administrators was a "deeply divisive issue in the years just preceding the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and England," and all 13 States reinstituted the right after hostilities ensued. Wolfram, The Constitutional History of the Seventh Amendment, 57 Minn.L.Rev. 639, 654-655 (1973). "In fact, 'the right to trial by jury was probably the only one universally secured by the first American constitutions.' " Id., at 655 (quoting L. Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American HistoryLegacy of Suppression 281 (1963 reprint)). Fear of a Federal Government that had not guaranteed jury trial in civil cases, voiced first at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and regularly during the ratification debates, was the concern that precipitated the maelstrom over the need for a bill of rights in the United States Constitution. Wolfram, supra, at 657-660.
This Court has long recognized the caliber of this right. In Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 446, 7 L.Ed. 732 (1830), Justice Story stressed: "The trial by jury is justly dear to the American people. It has always been an object of deep interest and solicitude, and every encroachment upon it has been watched with great jealousy." Similarly, in Jacob v. New York City, 315 U.S. 752, 752-753, 62 S.Ct. 854, 854-855, 86 L.Ed. 1166 (1942), we said that "the right of jury trial in civil cases at common law is a basic and fundamental feature of our system of federal jurisprudence . . . a right so fundamental and sacred to the citizen that it should be jealously guarded by the courts."
As I have suggested in the past, I believe the duty of fair representation action resembles a common-law action against an attorney for malpractice more closely than it does any other form of action. See United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 74, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 1570, 67 L.Ed.2d 732 (1981) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Of course, this action is not an exact counterpart to a malpractice suit. Indeed, by definition, no recently recognized form of actionwhether the product of express congressional enactment or of judicial interpretationcan have a precise analogue in 17th- or 18th-century English law. Were it otherwise the form of action would not in fact be "recently recognized."
But the Court surely overstates this action's similarity to an action against a trustee. Collective bargaining involves no settlor, no trust corpus, and no trust instrument executed to convey property to beneficiaries chosen at the settlor's pleasure. Nor are these distinctions reified matters of pure form. The law of trusts originated to expand the varieties of land ownership in feudal England, and evolved to protect the paternalistic beneficence of the wealthy, often between generations and always over time. See 1 W. Fratcher, Scott on Trusts § 1 (4th ed. 1987); L. Friedman, A History of American Law 212, 222-223 (1973). Beneficiaries are protected from their own judgment.
The attorney-client relationship, by contrast, advances the client's interests in dealings with adverse parties. Clients are saved from their lack of skill, but their judgment is honored. Union members, as a group, accordingly have the power to hire, fire, and direct the actions of their representativesprerogatives anathema to the paternalistic forms of the equitable trust.
Justice MARSHALL, speaking for four Members of the Court, states an important and correct reason for finding the trust model better than the malpractice analogy. He observes that the client of an attorney, unlike a union member or beneficiary, controls the significant decisions concerning his litigation and can fire the attorney if not satisfied. See ante, at 568-569. Put another way, although a lawyer acts as an agent of his client, unions and trustees do not serve as agents of their members and beneficiaries in the conventional sense of being subject to their direction and control in pursuing claims. An individual union member cannot require his union to pursue a claim and cannot choose a different representative. See 29 U.S.C. 159(a) (1982 ed.) (making the union elected by the employees in a bargaining unit the exclusive representative); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 177, 87 S.Ct. 903, 909-910, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967) (allowing a union to exercise discretion in fulfilling its duty of fair representation). A trustee, likewise, may exercise proper discretion in deciding whether to press claims held in trust, see Blue v. Marshall, 3 P.Wms. 381, 383-384, 24 Eng.Rep. 1110, 1111 (Ch.1735); Restatement, supra, § 192, and in general does not act as an agent of his beneficiaries, see Taylor v. Davis, 110 U.S. 330, 334-335, 4 S.Ct. 147, 149-150, 28 L.Ed. 163 (1884) ("A trustee is not an agent. An agent represents and acts for his principal. . . . A trustee has no principal"); 1 A. Scott, Law of Trusts § 8, pp. 74-79 (3d ed. 1967) (distinguishing trustees from agents).
Further considerations fortify the conclusion that the trust analogy is the controlling one here. A union's duty of fair representation accords with a trustee's duty of impartiality. The duty of fair representation requires a union "to make an honest effort to serve the interests of all of its members, without hostility to any." Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330, 337, 73 S.Ct. 681, 686, 97 L.Ed. 1048 (1953). This standard may require a union to act for the benefit of employees who, as in this case, have antithetical interests. See Cox, The Legal Nature of Collective Bargaining Agreements, 57 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 21 (1958). Trust law, in a similar manner, long has required trustees to serve the interests of all beneficiaries with impartiality. See Stuart v. Stuart, 3 Beav. 430, 431, 49 Eng.Rep. 169, 169-170 (1841); Restatement, supra, § 183 ("When there are two or more beneficiaries of a trust, the trustee is under a duty to deal impartially with them"); 2 Scott, supra, § 183, pp. 1471-1472, and n. 2.
* In three cases we have found a right to trial by jury where there are legal claims that, for procedural reasons, a plaintiff could have or must have raised in the courts of equity before the systems merged. In Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 79 S.Ct. 948, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959), Fox, a potential defendant threatened with legal antitrust claims, brought an action for declaratory and injunctive relief against Beacon, the likely plaintiff. Because only the courts of equity had offered such relief prior to the merger of the two court systems, Fox had thought that it could deprive Beacon of a jury trial. Beacon, however, raised the antitrust issues as counterclaims and sought a jury. We ruled that, because Beacon would have had a right to a jury trial on its antitrust claims, Fox could not deprive it of a jury merely by taking advantage of modern declaratory procedures to sue first. The result was consistent with the spirit of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allow liberal joinder of legal and equitable actions, and the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. 2201, 2202 (1982 ed.), which preserves the right to jury trial to both parties. See 359 U.S., at 509-510, 79 S.Ct., at 956-957.
Our own writing confirms the consistency of this view with respect to the action before us. We have not deemed the elements of a duty of fair representation action to be independent of each other. Proving breach of the collectivebargaining agreement is but a preliminary and indispensable step to obtaining relief in a duty of fair representation action. We have characterized the breach-of-contract and duty issues as "inextricably interdependent" and have said that "to prevail against either the company or the Union, . . . employee-plaintiffs must not only show that their discharge was contrary to the contract but must also carry the burden of demonstrating breach of duty by the Union." DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 164-165, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 2290-2291, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted). The absence of distinct equitable courts provides no procedural reason for wresting one of these elements from the other.
In Tull, 481 U.S., at 422, 107 S.Ct., at 1838, the availability of damages again played a critical role in determining the right to a jury trial. In an environmental suit by the Government for injunctive relief and a civil penalty, both an equitable public nuisance action and a legal action in debt seemed appropriate historical models. We decided between them by noting that only the courts of law could award civil penalties. See id., at 422-425, 107 S.Ct., at 1838-1839. In the present case, however, one cannot characterize both the trust analogy and the legal malpractice comparisons as appropriate; the considerations discussed above, including the remedy available, all make the trust model superior. As we stated in Tull, "our search is for a single historical analog, taking into consideration the nature of the cause of action and the remedy as two important factors." Id., at 421, n. 6, 107 S.Ct., at 1837, n. 6. The trust action alone satisfies this standard.
The Court must adhere to the historical test in determining the right to a jury because the language of the Constitution requires it. The Seventh Amendment "preserves" the right to jury trial in civil cases. We cannot preserve a right existing in 1791 unless we look to history to identify it. Our precedents are in full agreement with this reasoning and insist on adherence to the historical test. No alternatives short of rewriting the Constitution exist. See F. James, Civil Procedure § 8.5, p. 352 (1965) ("For good or evil, both the constitution and the charters of the merged procedure embody the policy judgment, quite deliberately made, to leave the extent of jury trial about where history had come to place it"); Shapiro & Coquillette, The Fetish of Jury Trial in Civil Cases: A Comment on Rachal v. Hill, 85 Harv.L.Rev. 442, 449 (1971) ("Even the most ardent critic of any historical test would concede that matters that would have fallen entirely within the jurisdiction of a court of equity or admiralty in 1791 do not come within the definition of a suit at 'common law' under the seventh amendment"). If we abandon the plain language of the Constitution to expand the jury right, we may expect Courts with opposing views to curtail it in the future.
It is true that a historical inquiry into the distinction between law and equity may require us to enter into a domain becoming less familiar with time. Two centuries have passed since the Seventh Amendment's ratification, and the incompleteness of our historical records makes it difficult to know the nature of certain actions in 1791. The historical test, nonetheless, has received more criticism than it deserves. Although our application of the analysis in some cases may seem biased in favor of jury trials, the test has not become a nullity. We do not require juries in all statutory actions. See, e.g., Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U.S. 156, 162, n. 9, 101 S.Ct. 2698, 2702, n. 9, 69 L.Ed.2d 548 (1981) (no jury trial right in suits against the United States); Katchen v. Landy, 382 U.S. 323, 337-340, 86 S.Ct. 467, 476-478, 15 L.Ed.2d 391 (1966) (no jury trial right on certain bankruptcy claims); Luria v. United States, 231 U.S. 9, 27-28, 34 S.Ct. 10, 15, 58 L.Ed. 101 (1913) (no jury trial right in action to cancel naturalization). The historical test, in fact, resolves most cases without difficulty. See C. Wright, Law of Federal Courts § 92, p. 609 (4th ed. 1983) ("The vast and controversial literature that has developed as to the scope of the jury right is, fortunately, not in proportion to the practical importance of the problem in the actual working of the courts").
Because the NLRA, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C. 159(a) (1982 ed.), does not expressly create the duty of fair representation, resort to the statute to determine whether Congress provided for a jury trial in an action for breach of that duty is unavailing. Cf. Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 192, n. 6, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 1007, n. 6, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974) (recognizing the " 'cardinal principle that this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided.' " (quoting United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 369, 91 S.Ct. 1400, 1405, 28 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971))).
We later abandoned the reliance on state statutes of limitations for § 301 actions, and instead applied the federal limitations period for unfair labor practice charges, § 10(b) of the NLRA, 49 Stat. 453, as amended, 29 U.S.C. 160(b) (1982 ed.), to both a § 301 claim against an employer and a duty of fair representation claim against a union. DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983).
The Union's argument, however, conflates the two parts of our Seventh Amendment inquiry. Under the dissent's approach, if the action at issue were analogous to an 18th-century action within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of equity, we would necessarily conclude that the remedy sought was also equitable because it would have been unavailable in a court of law. This view would, in effect, make the first part of our inquiry dispositive. We have clearly held, however, that the second part of the inquirythe nature of the reliefis more important to the Seventh Amendment determination. See supra, at 565. The second part of the analysis, therefore, should not replicate the "abstruse historical" inquiry of the first part, Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 538, n. 10, 90 S.Ct. 733, 738, n. 10, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970), but requires consideration of the general types of relief provided by courts of law and equity.
Even where Congress has assigned resolution of a dispute to a specialized forum, the right to a jury trial does not turn on whether the analogous 18th-century action was legal or equitable. As we explained in Granfinanciera, S.A., supra, at 42 and n. 4, 109 S.Ct., at 2790 and n. 4, a court first looks to the analogous historical form of action and the nature of the relief sought, alloting greater weight to the nature of the relief. If this inquiry leads the court to conclude that the party is entitled to a jury trial, the court must consider whether the party is asserting a public right or private righta distinction contingent on the government's role in creating the right, see 492 U.S., at 42, n. 4, 109 S.Ct., at 2790, n. 4 and whether jury trials would impair the functioning of the legislative scheme. The result of the search for a historical analog is subordinate to the nature of the relief sought and irrelevant to the subsequent inquiry.