Cite as: 526 U. S. 687 (1999)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
relief." Feltner, supra, at 352. Because Del Monte Dunes' statutory suit sounded in tort and sought legal relief, it was an action at law.
2
In an attempt to avoid the force of this conclusion, the city urges us to look not to the statutory basis of Del Monte Dunes' claim but rather to the underlying constitutional right asserted. At the very least, the city asks us to create an exception to the general Seventh Amendment rule governing § 1983 actions for claims alleging violations of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. See New Port Largo, Inc. v. Monroe County, 95 F. 3d 1084 (CA11 1996) (finding, in tension with the Ninth Circuit's decision in this case, that there is no right to a jury trial on a takings claim brought under § 1983). Because the jury's role in estimating just compensation in condemnation proceedings was inconsistent and unclear at the time the Seventh Amendment was adopted, this Court has said "that there is no constitutional right to a jury in eminent domain proceedings." United States v. Reynolds, 397 U. S. 14, 18 (1970); accord, Bauman v. Ross, 167 U. S. 548, 593 (1897). The city submits that the analogy to formal condemnation proceedings is controlling, so that there is no jury right here.
As Justice Scalia notes, see post, at 724-726, we have declined in other contexts to classify § 1983 actions based on the nature of the underlying right asserted, and the city provides no persuasive justification for adopting a different rule for Seventh Amendment purposes. Even when analyzed not as a § 1983 action simpliciter, however, but as a § 1983 action seeking redress for an uncompensated taking, Del Monte Dunes' suit remains an action at law.
Although condemnation proceedings spring from the same Fifth Amendment right to compensation which, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, is applicable here, see First English, supra, at 315 (citing Jacobs v. United States, 290 U. S. 13, 16 (1933)), a condemnation action differs in im-
711
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