Cite as: 526 U. S. 687 (1999)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
on the ground that condemnation did not involve the determination of legal rights because liability was undisputed:
"We are therefore of opinion that the trial by jury is preserved inviolate in the sense of the constitution, when in all criminal cases, and in civil cases when a right is in controversy in a court of law, it is secured to each party. In cases of this description [condemnation proceedings], the right to take, and the right to compensation, are admitted; the only question is the amount, which may be submitted to any impartial tribunal the legislature may designate." Bonaparte v. Camden & Amboy R. Co., 3 F. Cas. 821, 829 (No. 1,617) (CC NJ 1830) (Baldwin, Circuit Justice).
(Although Justice Souter's opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part takes issue with this distinction, its arguments are unpersuasive. First, it correctly notes that when the government initiates formal condemnation procedures, a landowner may question whether the proposed taking is for public use. The landowner who raises this issue, however, seeks not to establish the government's liability for damages, but to prevent the government from taking his property at all. As the dissent recognizes, the relief desired by a landowner making this contention is analogous not to damages but to an injunction; it should be no surprise, then, that the landowner is not entitled to a jury trial on his entitlement to a remedy that sounds not in law but in equity. Second, the dissent refers to "the diversity of rationales underlying early state cases in which the right of a direct condemnee to a jury trial was considered and denied." Post, at 742. The dissent mentions only the rationale that because the government is immune from suit for damages, it can qualify any remedy it provides by dispensing with the right to a jury trial. The cases cited for this proposition—two state-court cases antedating the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and an off-point federal case—do not implicate
713
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